JK 2265 
. M7 
1923 

cocv i irties, Politics, and People 

By 

Raymond Moley 


Souvenir Edition 

Published by the 

National League of Women Voters 
1923 




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iftram 



Uatpr ’0 3ffirst Hirtlj&atj &amtrmr EiUtian 

























Parties, Politics, and People 


Four Le&ures 

to the 

League of Women Voters of Cleveland 

by 

Raymond Moley, Ph. D. 

Associate Professor of Government 
Barnard College, Columbia University 

Revised 1923 


Published by the 

NATIONAL LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS 

532 SEVENTEENTH STREET, N. W. 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 


J1W 

I 


. > 


Copyrirht. 1921 and 1921, by Ramond Moley 



©C1A758126 

SEP 19 1923 





A Pledge for Conscientious Citizens 

PROPOSED BY 

Mrs. Maud Wood Park, President 
National League of Women Voters 


Believing in government by the people, for the people, 

I WILL DO MY BEST— 

First: To inform myself about public questions, the 

principles and policies of political parties, and 
the qualifications of candidates for public offices. 

Second: To vote according to my conscience in every 
election, primary or final, at which I am entitled 
to vote. 


Third: To obey the law even when I am not in sym¬ 

pathy with all of its provisions. 

Fourth : To support by all fair means the principles of 
which I approve. 

Fifth : To respect the right of others to uphold convic¬ 

tions that may differ from my own. 

Sixth : To regard my citizenship as a public trust. 





























































Contents 


Chapter Page 

I The Forces that Make Parties. 5 

II National Parties Today — Their Policies and 

Methods.:. 27 

III Local Party Organizations. 54 

IV Training for Popular Government. 79 

Appendix 

Some Useful Books on Political Parties 


Chart—Party Control in National Government 













Parties, Politics, and People 

CHAPTER I 

THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 

Harding affirmed X F we were to characterize in a few words the 
faith in parties I political philosophy of the late President of 
the United States, I believe that it would 
be a fervent, almost passionate belief in constitutional government 
through political parties. Warren G. Harding was a party man. 
He was stalwartly, resolutely, honestly, and permanently a Re¬ 
publican. His declarations of faith in his party had no cant in them, 
no hypocritical apologies for partisanship. They were the honest 
acknowledgments of what was to him a self-evident truth, that re¬ 
publics are possible only through parties. In his speech of accept¬ 
ance Mr. Harding said: 

“Let me be understood clearly from the very beginning. I 
believe in party sponsorship in government. I believe in party 
government as distinguished from personal government, individual, 
dictatorial, autocratic, or what not. In a citizenship of more than 
100 millions it is impossible to reach agreement upon all questions. 
Parties are formed by those who reach a consensus of opinion. It 
was the intent of the founding fathers to give to this republic a 
dependable and enduring popular government, representative in 
form, and it was designed to make political parties not only the 
preserving sponsors but also the effective agencies through whicn 
hopes and aspirations and convictions and conscience may be trans¬ 
lated into public performance. 

“The American achievement under the plan of the fathers is 
nowhere disputed. On the contrary the American example has been 
the model of every republic which glorifies the progress of liberty 
and is everywhere the leaven of representative democracy which 
has expanded human freedom. It has been wrought through party 
government. Our first committal is the restoration of representative 
popular government, under the constitution, through the agency of 
the Republican Party.” 


6 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Washington It is very interesting to compare this opinion with 
feared parties that of the first President of the United States. In 
his farewell address, President Washington “in a 
most solemn manner” warned his countrymen “against the baneful 
effects of the spirit of party.” 

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the 
state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geo¬ 
graphical discriminations. ... It serves always to distract the 
public councils, and enfeebles the public administration. It agitates 
the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles 
the animosity of one part against another, foments occasional riot 
and insurrection. . . . It is a spirit not to be encouraged. . . 

A fire not to be quenched; it demands a uniform vigilance to pre¬ 
vent its bursting into flame, lest, instead of warming, it should 
consume.” 

Washington’s immediate successor, John Adams, shared this 
fear of the development of political parties: 

“There is nothing which I dread so much as the division of the 
republic into two great parties, each under its leader, concerting 
measures in opposition to each other. This in my humble opinion is 
to be feared as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” 

Thomas Jefferson was more deeply schooled in the lessons of 
experience, closer to the realities of life and probably more widely 
read and informed than either Washington or Adams. This man, 
whom we should call in modern life “a practical politician,” clearly 
foresaw the inevitable character of party divisions. He asserted 
that parties are “founded in the nature of man.” From Jefferson to 
Harding there seems to be no further important attempt to assert 
that America can operate without political parties. We seem to be 
unable to enjoy popular government without them. It is, therefore, 
the plain responsibility of good citizens to understand them and to 
seek to use them for the attainment of common interests. 

The party a To sketch the long story of parties in the United 
primary force States from the time when Washington regretfully 
in American saw their rise to the advent of so frank a party man 
history as Mr. Harding is the purpose of this first chapter. 

This is not an easy task. The party has so woven 
itself into the fabric of the nation, it colors so greatly the operation 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


7 


of government, it is so closely related to the operation of the eco¬ 
nomic life of the nation that adequately to tell the story of our 
national parties is almost to tell the story of the nation. 

We shall view the story of parties in the United States only in 
its bold outlines. We shall take our stand so far away that we shall 
not be diverted from our quest by any of the colorful but unim¬ 
portant incidents with which political history is enriched; we shall 
ignore personalities, however interesting, unless they help us to 
understand the bold outlines of our picture. We must ignore many 
silly and futile campaigns, and pass over without comment, quan¬ 
tities of those meaningless party declarations and solemn affirma¬ 
tions of nothing with which party history is burdened. We shall 
see as one who views a landscape from a high hill only the great 
movements of population growth, the great highways and river 
courses of economic life, and the clustering of human endeavors 
around fundamental purposes and interests. 

In order to illustrate with some emphasis the forces which 
create national parties, we shall in this account of political history 
consider only four great party movements. These can well be called 
the four great political revolutions of American history. They are 
in fact scarcely less significant than the Revolution which, while it 
separated us from England, did not greatly disturb the social and 
economic relationships of the people of the United States. 

Four political These events, which color all political history and 
revolutions which, if understood properly, will illustrate the 
operation of parties everywhere and always, are: 

1. The Rise of Federalism and the Formation of the American 
Constitution. 

2. The Jacksonian Revolution. 

3. The Rise of the Republican Party and the Election of Lin¬ 
coln. 

4. The Unsuccessful Agrarian and Debtor Uprising under 
William Jennings Bryan in 1896. 

All of these political events were at the bottom caused by an¬ 
other revolution more far-reaching and epochal than all other revo- 


8 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


lutions, the movement which in the last two centuries has trans¬ 
formed the world and has marked the advent of a new civilization— 
the development of industrial life which is commonly and properly 
called the Industrial Revolution. 


The Rise of Federalism 

Washington’s earnest warning against the spirit of faction is 
perhaps the best evidence of how deeply the great President had 
felt the social and political struggle which had attended every 
month of his service as President of the Constitutional Convention 
and as President of the United States. This period, fondly recalled 
by the ill-informed as a period of singular unanimity and peace 
when the people of the nation quietly placed all faith and trust in 
the “founding fathers,” was in fact a period marked by the most 
bitter social and political conflict in our history. It was revolu¬ 
tionary in its processes and epochal in its historical significance. 

Demoralized The movement for a new constitution was caused 
business by the anarchy of states’ rights which the loosely 

demanded drawn Articles of Confederation permitted and en- 

union couraged. The commercial classes of the Eastern 

Seaboard were greatly distressed by three important 
factors rising out of this anarchy: the demoralization of business 
caused by the fact that the state governments vied with each other 
in issuing currency which disorganized credit and values; the se¬ 
curities of both state and nation, now largely in the hands of the 
mercantile classes of the seaboard, were almost worthless because 
neither interest nor principal seemed likely ever to be paid; and 
trade among the states was paralyzed because every state was a 
tariff-collecting and a commerce-controlling unit. It was not a 
mere theory of national sovereignty against a sentimental states’ 
rights doctrine that brought about the making of the Federal Con¬ 
stitution. It was an attempt to end forever the use of the power 
of independent states to “hurt business.” 

A number of men vitally interested in commerce and finance 
began as early as 1781 to work toward the formation of a new 
constitution. The movement continued until, largely due to the 
sagacious industry of Alexander Hamilton, a convention was 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


9 


gathered at Philadelphia for the purpose of amending the Articles 
of Confederation. This group was overwhelmingly drawn from the 
commercial and propertied classes . 1 They were representative of 
a small group “possessed of unity and informed by a conscious 
solidarity of interests .” 2 

Economic forces They disregarded their instructions which 
put over told them merely to amend. They created anew, 

constitution They formed (as Woodrow Wilson, the his¬ 

torian, states, “wisely behind closed doors”) a 
new constitution and a new government designed to relieve in three 
most vital respects the economic defects of the old system. The 
new national government could control currency, pay interest and 
principal on the national debt, and take from the states their right 
to regulate commerce. This was a revolution, fundamental and 
far-reaching. After the Convention the new group carried on a 
campaign in each state to “put over” the new constitution. This 
campaign has nowhere been more accurately and lucidly told than 
in Wilson’s “History of the American People.” 

“It was interest and the pressure of affairs which told most 
decisively in the vote. It was noteworthy how the delegates were 
divided. Those from the larger towns and the hamlets where the 
homes lay thickest, where commerce moved upon the rivers and to 
the sea; those from the farming regions which lay by tide water 
or near the long rivers which crossed the boundaries of states and 
floated produce to markets within another jurisdiction; those who 
came from exposed frontiers where there was nothing to hope for 
from independence and much to hope for from a protecting com¬ 
mon government; all who felt the wide movement of trade or the 
need for free markets or the too sharp pinch of rivalry between 
state and state or the imminent threat of division and disorder, to 
the unsettling of property and the upsetting of their lives, voted 
for the constitution. 

“It was opposed by the men who lived remote from the centers 
of population and the stronger currents of trade, whose lives held 
no wide connections yet sufficed them well; by men who were more 

1 “A large majority of them were men of substance; a considerable minority were men 
of wealth”—A. T. Hadley, “Undercurrents in American Politics.” 

2 Woodrow Wilson, “Division and Reunion,” p. 12. See also C. A. Beard, “An Economic 
Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.” 


10 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


likely to be debtors than to be creditors and wished their states 
left at liberty to legalize a depreciated currency; by men whose 
homes were upon the western rivers which ran toward the Spanish 
territory, not toward the ports of the East, and who doubted their 
real connection of interests with the seaboard; by the great land 
owners of New York whose estates shut free farmers out and who 
wished to keep their mastery of their state and to collect duties at 
their great port. 

“Tories voted for it because they hoped to be safer under it; 
Whigs voted against it because they would be a little freer with¬ 
out it.” 


After the Constitution had been ratified by a sufficient number 
of states and the new government under Washington had gone into 
operation, the political struggle which developed over the ratifica¬ 
tion of the Constitution was transferred to Congress, to the Courts, 
and strange to say to the cabinet of the President itself. But the 
forces of Federalism were by this time well on their way to the ac¬ 
complishment of their purposes. They were in firm control of Con¬ 
gress, they held the Supreme Court and the Administration. Wash¬ 
ington was of course in spirit and action always a Federalist. Hamil¬ 
ton, the master statesman of the newly created government, pro- 
ceeded to place it upon the firmest foundation of 
P y reality, the selfishness of man. His statesmanship 

constitution WaS never so c l ear ^y demonstrated as in the pur¬ 
poses of his great financial measures which he soon 
saw enacted into law. The debt was funded and provisions were made 
for the payment of every dollar of interest and principal, of both 
the national and state debts. To carry out these policies, he estab¬ 
lished a great United States Bank in spite of the opposition of 
Jefferson and his friends, now thoroughly aroused to the serious¬ 
ness of this revolutionary overturning of the old order of unpaid 
debts and paper money. The statesmanship of Hamilton consisted 
in the manner in which these financial measures won the support 
of the men of wealth and power of the nation. As Woodrow Wil¬ 
son says in his “History of the American People”: “It was Hamil¬ 
ton’s purpose to draw men of wealth and power and property to 
the support of the government by means of his financial measures; 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


11 


to give them definite reasons for wishing it to succeed, and for de¬ 
termining to stand by it until it did succeed; building for the govern¬ 
ment a great backing of interest.” 

At this moment the crafty Jefferson started to gather together 
the opposition to the Federalist party. He worked for years in 
making his party, he built it of all of the assorted opponents to the 
measures of Hamilton, and he gave it a philosophy and a method of 
action. His success was phenomenal. Everywhere he found men 
eager to check and restrict the new government to a more modest 
scale of power. And in 1800, he swept Federalism from power and 
consigned it to oblivion. 

The Jacksonian Revolution 

While the election of Jefferson indicated great popular opposi¬ 
tion to Federalism and while the Federalist Party itself never came 
back into power, its principles did not die. Jefferson and his party 
did not abolish the Bank formed by Hamilton, on the contrary its 
charter was later renewed. The power of the national government 
under the Constitution was stretched to the utmost by the purchase 
of Louisiana, and after the War of 1812, a sweeping nationalist pro¬ 
tective tariff was adopted. In addition to Federalistic influence 
shown in the growing conservatism of Jefferson’s party actions, the 
Supreme Court under John Marshall remained Federalist until the 
regime of Jackson. 

Steam and The period from 1816 to 1828 was one of gather- 

slaves brought ing storm. The Federalist Party was dead. Poli- 
new order tics was largely made up of factional and personal 

quarrels. The dominant party of Jefferson still 
held its power with practically no opposition. But great economic 
changes were taking place. Jefferson had always feared the rise 
of manufacturing in the United States, saying that the growth of 
great cities with a population of workingmen would mark the end 
of liberty. But his opposition was impotent in the face of economic 
law. In New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and along the 
natural highways from East to West, new manufacturing enter¬ 
prises appeared. The steam engine worked a revolution in the life 
of the time. The old commercial interests of Federalism were 



12 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


absorbed and augmented by a new industrial artistocracy. At the 
same time a hardy farming population crossed the mountains and 
settled the Middle West. The frontier was peopled with a strong 
agricultural group. These new free farmers were wholly out of 
sympathy with the more sophisticated and economically secure 
East. At the same time the great growth of industrial life in Eng¬ 
land and eastern United States brought about a tremendous demand 
for cotton. The slave power of the South waxed stronger and 
stronger and more desirous of new land and more governmental 
privileges. 

Debt crushed The new West, in the years after 1816, was deeply 
new West involved in the difficulties usually attendant upon a 
frontier country. Extensive public improvements 
were needed which meant that capital must be imported from the 
East. The individual farmer was in nearly every case struggling 
under the burden of a mortgage. The resulting difficulties were all 
attributed, by those who suffered, to the center of the national 
financial system, the United States Bank. The years 1819 and 1820 
illustrate the distresses of the period. Senator Thomas H. Benton 
has described the spirit of the time in the following terms: “The 
years 1819 and 1820 were a period of gloom and agony. No money, 
either gold or silver; no measure or standard of value left remain¬ 
ing. The local banks after a brief resumption of specie payments 
again sank into a state of suspension. The Bank of the United 
States, created as a remedy for all these evils, was now prostrate 
and helpless, with no power left but that of suing its debtors, and 
selling their property, and purchasing their property for itself at 
its own nominal price. No price for property or produce. No sales 
but those of sheriff or marshal. No purchasers at these sales but 
the creditors or some hoarder of money. No employment for in¬ 
dustry—no demand for labor—no sale for produce of the farm— 
no sound of the hammer but that of the auctioneer knocking down 
property. Stop laws—property laws—replevin laws—stay laws— 
loan office laws—the intervention of the legislator between the 
creditor and the debtor; that was the business of legislation in 
three-fourths of the states of the Union—of all south and west of 
New England. No medium of exchange but depreciated paper, no 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


13 


change even but little bits of foul paper, marked so many cents 
and signed by some tradesman, barber, or innkeeper; exchanges 
deranged to the extent of fifty or one hundred per cent. Distress 
the universal cry of the people: Relief the universal demand thun¬ 
dered at the doors of all legislatures State and Federal/’ 

" Attacks were made upon the national credit system by in¬ 
dividual state movements. State legislatures sought to relieve their 
rural population by creating state banks and through some subter¬ 
fuge to give them the power to issue money in spite of the well 
defined Constitutional prohibitions against state-made money. But 
the Supreme Court, still Federalist, met these populistic attempts 
with firm and consistent vetoes. Nothing seemed to remain but a 
national revolt against the Bank and the government that seemed 
to support it. The storm which broke in 1828 with the triumphant, 
overwhelming election of Andrew Jackson was a result of all of the 
gathering protest of a generation. 

Jackson led The fiery, intrepid leader of this great political 

war on money revolution was in himself the embodiment of the 
power spirit of the West. He had no sympathy for the 

half-way measures of Jefferson. The difference 
between the two men is well described in the following quotation: 

“One (Jefferson) an aristocrat and a philosophical radical 
deliberately practiced the arts of the politician and exhibited often¬ 
times the sort of insincerity which subtle natures yield to without 
loss of essential integrity. 

“Jackson was incapable of arts or sophistications of any kind. 

He was a man of the people. Jefferson was a patron of the peo¬ 
ple; appealed to the rank and file, but shared neither their tastes 
nor their passions. . . . 

“Jackson believed with all the terrible force that was in him 
when once engaged in any public matter, that those who were 
with him were his friends and the country’s, and those against 
him the enemies of the country as well as of himself. His nature 
was compact of passion.” 1 

To Jackson, the ills from which the country suffered were very 
simple of solution. The hated Bank was to blame. To destroy it 

l Woodrow Wilson, “History of the American People,” Vol. III. 


14 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


meant to relieve the suffering masses who had brought about his 
election. And so after a clean sweep of every vestige of the old 
party, including practically every federal office holder, Jackson 
with incredible force and directness destroyed the United States 
Bank and scattered credit to every state. 

Jackson held the political power of the country in the hollow 
of his hand practically to the end of his life. He achieved success 
beyond his most ambitious expectations. For years he was the 
hero of a vast and triumphant ruling group, he was denied nothing 
that he asked, he designated his successor in office, he lived to 
see the defeat and humiliation of his rivals Clay and Calhoun, he 
saw the Bank in ruins and its president in the hands of the penal 
law, he remade the Supreme Court and hurled in the face of the 
next generation a tribunal made in his own image with his trusty 
henchman Taney at its head. His biographer 2 says that “he never 
repented, never thought he was wrong, and never forgave an in¬ 
dividual enemy/' This great figure, not because of his own power 
but because he so accurately represented the dominant class in 
America at the time, marked the beginning of a new and vastly 
significant era in American history. 

The permanent significance of such a figure in the study of 
politics is very great. His singleness of view, his terrible intensity 
in the accomplishment of his purposes, his lack of that judicial 
poise which characterizes a sophisticated mind weighing opposing 
considerations, his frank obedience to the promptings of emotion, 
his lack of perception of those shades of character which assert that 
specific persons are neither wholly bad nor wholly good, his easy 
classification of all men into two groups, the good and the evil, 
are true of every leader of a popular uprising. This is because 
they are the characteristics of people in the mass, intent upon 
bettering their conditions. At least two other significant American 
figures, Bryan and Roosevelt, were similar in this respect to Jack- 
son. Their vital and unquenchable power shows how clearly they 
represented man’s traits. The man who, in politics, sees simply 
and acts with vigor, is always understandable to the minds of most 
people. He is formidable always because he is so clearly under- 

2 W. G. Sumner. 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


15 


stood. He is often unfair to his opponents, injudicious and unjust 
in his assertions, prejudiced frankly and unashamed. But he wields 
power because the masses of the voters must simplify the issue 
before them before they can act together. Sophistication and dis¬ 
crimination often seem to be the allies of those who would divide 
and exploit the mass of voters. 

The Rise of the Republican Party 

Rails and In order to understand the forces which cul- 

factories minated in 1860 in the great victory of the Re¬ 

remade North publican party, and the conflict which followed, it 

will be necessary to describe briefly the two great 
economic systems which developed in the United States during the 
years following 1840. In the North, the Industrial Revolution con¬ 
tinued with great rapidity. The Erie Canal was built. Railroads 
were extended in all directions. New England and the East was 
bound closely to the Middle West with great arteries of commerce. 
Manufacturing developed with remarkable speed. Great cities 
grew, and before the year 1850, the modern industrial and commer¬ 
cial structure was already in process of development. This eco¬ 
nomic structure was closely connected with the interests of the free 
farming population of the Middle West and the new states which 
were being formed west of the Mississippi River. This free farm¬ 
ing population was the group which produced the food and raw 
materials to supply the new industrial population of the East. It 
had very little in common with the slavocracy of 
South became t j ie s ou th. Its currents of interest flowed east 
slavocracy an d west ra ther than north and south. It ceased 

to have cause for antagonism against the East as in Jackson’s time, 
and found its real interests now in those sections which, in 1820, 
had been the source of its difficulties. The North in the course of 
time became one great unit of interest. 

On the other hand the South had developed an entirely distinct 
civilization. Its dominating product, cotton, made necessary large 
estates and a large and cheap supply of negro labor. The number 
of slaves increased very rapidly as the cotton industry grew in im¬ 
portance. With this it became necessary to all who maintained 


16 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


slave power to seek new territory for cotton growing and the west¬ 
ward movement of the slave power began. The Democratic party 
of the time became entirely dominated by the slave power, not be¬ 
cause of its numerical superiority, but because it was a small, com¬ 
pact, aggressive, and wealthy group of intelligent and practical 
people. 

The weak government of James K. Polk was pushed by this 
power into the Mexican War, and in the interest of the slave power 
the United States seized a large part of Mexico. But this expansion 
was not sufficient. The slave power began to look with eager eyes 
upon the free territory of the West, and when it sought to expand 
into the West and North, it came violently into conflict in the state 
of Kansas with the free farming population which we have just 
described. 

To understand the slave power it is necessary to comprehend 
the anatomy of its society. It was a frank class rule. Not over ten 
thousand people ruled all of the southern states. This small group 
supplied lawyers, statesmen, office holders, business managers, 
writers, ministers, and all of the rest of the leaders of their civil¬ 
ization. Below this was a group of servile and poverty-ridden 
whites. Still lower in the social scale were the slaves who con¬ 
stituted the source of wealth and power in this strange, medieval 
survival of a feudal civilization. Slaves were rising in price. The 
owners of slaves fell more and more into debt to northern capitalists, 
and on that account the antagonism between the North and South 
was increased very greatly. If one will but read the debates in con¬ 
gress during the twenty tumultuous years preceding the Civil War, 
he will find many violent denunciations of the so-called plutocracy 
of the North and the South. Indeed a southern congressman on 
one occasion said that his hatred of the sentimental abolitionists of 
New England was not greater than his hatred of the money 
changers of the North who were binding the rulers of the South 
with chains of credit. 

Up to 1855, the interests of the North had been too sectional, 
competitive, and diversified to form a common political unity. But 
in that year a political movement began which was destined to play 
an enormous part in the subsequent history of the nation. The old 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


17 


Whig party, opportunistic and hypocritical, died in 1852. It was 
still impossible to form a party purely on the slavery issue. So 
one small political attempt after another was destined to a short 
life. Finally, sufficient statesmanship arose in the North to recog¬ 
nize the economic basis of the civilization of the free states. The 
Republican party was formed and placed a presidential candidate 
in the field in 1856. The stark reaction of Buchanan caused the 
new Republican party to draw to itself elements of protest from 
all sections, until with the spring of 1860, the South was thoroughly 
frightened by the progress of this great, new movement. 

Republican No party could be conceived with a more ideal 

party formed constituency than this new group. It had its ideal- 
to fight slavery istic elements in such leaders as Greeley and Dana. 

Its fundamental ideal purpose was the liberation 
of a large part of the human race. It could base its appeal upon 
the most fundamental American doctrine of human equality. The 
material sinews of its might were the economic power of the new 
industrial system of the North, and the free farming interest of 
the West. It was a combination well worthy of its subsequent 
history. 

It found its candidate in 1860 in a western man who knew and 
felt and could express the aspirations and interests of the western 
farming group. At the same time, Lincoln was far-seeing states¬ 
man enough to recognize and to use the new power of organized 
industry in the East. He ran for president upon a platform which 
not only took a positive stand upon the question of the expansion 
of slavery, but recognized the need of the new industries in the 
East for protection from foreign competition. In other words, Lin¬ 
coln was elected upon a platform which contained two fundamental 
declarations, one in favor of maintaining a free territory in the 
West, and the other to “encourage the development of the industrial 
interests ,, of the East. With a division in the Democratic party 
caused by the divergent interests between the Douglas Free Soil 
faction and the Breckenridge Slavery group, the success of the 
Republican party was assured. 


18 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Lincoln fused It is interesting to note how adroitly President 
new forces Lincoln managed the economic groups of the 
North and directed them to the accomplishment of 
what was to him the first great and fundamental mission, the 
preservation of the union. Nothing illustrates this better than a 
study of his own utterances during the progress of his trip from 
Springfield to Washington in 1861. In Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, 
he spoke of the free soil principles in the Republican creed, but in 
Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, he gave major attention to the tariff. 
He assured his Pennsylvania audiences that the Republican plat¬ 
form promises concerning protection would be fulfilled. 

In summarizing the economic achievements of the Republican 
party during the years which followed, we shall use an editorial 
published in the New York Tribune on July 30, 1884, which pur¬ 
ported to be a summary of the achievements of the Republican 
party during its first quarter century of power, to wit: it killed 
slavery; it won the Civil War; it gave free homesteads to western 
farmers; it gave protection to industry by a defensive tariff; it paid 
debts and reduced the taxes; and it expanded the exports of the 
United States fourfold and its imports twofold. 

And so the formation of the Republican party became the 
dominant political event of the second half of our national) exist¬ 
ence.^ With some slight variations, its basic power and its political 
policies have remained the same. It still gains its support from 
the industrial life of the East and Middle West and from the farm¬ 
ing interests of the Mississippi valley. In this, at least, the party 
which won such a great victory in 1920 is not unlike the party of 
Abraham Lincoln. 


The Debtor Upriseng of 1896 

It remains only to describe the last great challenge which has 
been directed toward the supremacy of the Republican party in the 
United States—the Free Silver Movement which culminated in the 
great Bryan Campaign of 1896. The great concentration of indus¬ 
try in the North, with its accompanying concentration of financial 
power during the twenty years following the administration of 
General Grant, was attended by a great increase in the difficulties 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


19 


of portions of the farming population of the West. The western 
farmers became less independent and self-sufficing than the earlier 
pioneers of Jackson’s time. Railroads, elevators, and other market¬ 
ing facilities were extremely important to them. These became 
the means of exploiting the farmers in the interest of those who 
controlled the instruments of commerce. The debts of the western 
farmers increased, and many attempts were made by state legis¬ 
latures to curb the power of the railroads and to lighten the burden 
of debt upon the farmer. Most of these attempts were unsuccessful 
because of the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. 

New debtor So, as in Jackson’s time, the discontent of the west- 
class rose ern agrarian population turned to the attempt to cap¬ 
ture the national government through the formation 
of a great political movement. Several parties based upon the prin¬ 
ciple of government ownership and cheap money were born. Most 
of them 1 like the Populist and Greenback Parties lived short and 
tumultuous lives. But finally, in the last administration of Presi¬ 
dent Cleveland, the attempt to capture one or the other of the great 
political parties reached serious proportions. The discontent of 
this period was greatly aggravated by the panic of 1893 and the 
period of poverty and unemployment which followed. Finally, in 
the political campaign of 1896 the issue was clearly joined. The 
Republican party under the domination of Senator Hanna came out 
clearly for a gold standard and for the preservation of the well-tried 
and well-defined policies of the Republican party. This of course 
meant that the elements in the Republican party which represented 
great business interests were ready to make a stand and to fight 
for their continued ascendency. When the Republican party took 
this position, all of that part of the Republican party which favored 
free silver, broke forever (in most cases) with the party of their 
fathers. 

Bryan defied The Democratic party was captured by the free 
“capitalism” silver element and proclaimed a platform practically 
promising to raise the burden of the debtor class by 
increasing the amount of currency in circulation. The economic 
alignment during this year is nowhere more clearly shown than in 


20 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


the famous speech made by William Jennings Bryan in the Demo¬ 
cratic Convention. In the following words he hurled defiance at 
the “capitalistic” elements in the Democratic party: 

“We stand here, representing people who are equals before 
the law of the largest cities in the state of Massachusetts. When 
you come before us and tell us that we shall disturb your business 
interests we reply that you have disturbed our business interests 
by your action. We say to you that you have made too limited 
in its application the definition of a business man. The man who 
is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer. 

The attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the 
corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the 
crossroad store is as much a business man as the merchant of 
New York. The farmer who goes in the morning and toils all day, 
begins in the spring and toils all summer, and by the application 
of brain and muscle to the natural resources of this country creates 
wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the 
Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain. The miners who 
go a thousand feet into the earth or climb two thousand feet upon 
the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious 
metals to be poured in the channels of trade, are as much business 
men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the 
money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of 
business men.” 

Bryan’s foes The campaign of 1896 was almost without prece- 
bitter dent for bitterness and public interest. Bryan made 

a tremendous appeal not only to the farm class of 
America but to industrial labor as well. His appeal to the farmer 
was very successful, but his appeal to labor was not so clearly 
accepted. His only appeal to labor seemed to be that the farmer 
and the worker having the same common enemy, namely the 
capitalist, should join hands in supporting the Democratic party. 
That this argument was not successful is indicated by the election 
returns in which the great industrial states voted solidly for the 
Republican candidate. The election of this year, because of the 
momentous issues involved, brought out a larger relative vote than 
any election in the history of the United States. Some notion of 
the bitterness with which eastern interests fought the Bryan Move- 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


21 


ment is gleaned from the following editorial in the New York 
Tribune published a day or two after the election: 

“The thing was conceived in iniquity and was brought forth in 
sin. It had its origin in a malicious conspiracy against the honour 
and integrity of the nation. It gained such monstrous growth as 
it enjoyed from an assiduous culture of the basest passions of the 
least worthy members of the community. It had been defeated and 
destroyed because right is right and God is God. Its nominal head 
was worthy of the cause. Nominal because the wretched, rattle- 
pated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rotten¬ 
ness, was not the real leader of that league of hell. He was only 
a puppet in the blood-imbued hands of Altgeld, the anarchist, and 
Debs, the revolutionist; Bryan was—willing and eager. Not one 
of his masters was more apt than he at lies and forgeries and 
blasphemies and all the nameless iniquities of that campaign 
against the Ten Commandments. He goes down with the cause, 
and must abide with it in the history of infamy. He had less 
provocation than Benedict Arnold, less intellectual force than 
Aaron Burr, less manliness and courage than Jefferson Davis. 

He was the rival of them all in deliberate wickedness, and treason 
to the Public. His name belongs with theirs, neither the most 
brilliant nor the most hateful in the list. Good riddance to it 
all, to conspiracy and conspirators, and to the foul menace of 
repudiation and anarchy against the honour and life of the Re¬ 
public.” 

That the violence of this denunciation was not entirely char¬ 
acteristic of conservative newspapers is indicated by some of the 
pulpit utterances of the period. Dr. Parkhurst said of the Bryan 
movement: 

“Mutual confidence does not exist today and attempts are 
being made, deliberate and hot-blooded, to destroy what little of it 
remains. I dare, in God’s pulpit, to brand such attempts as 
accursed and treasonable.” 

National Parties Today 

No intelligent understanding of present day politics can be had 
without a somewhat critical review of the political movements of 
the past twenty years. These years have been in many respects 


22 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


the most momentous of our history. The forces which first ap¬ 
peared during this period are probably to determine the great po¬ 
litical movements of the near future. To understand them, there¬ 
fore, and to properly evaluate their significance, is to have the 
equipment necessary for intelligent political action in the years to 
t*ome. 

The victory of McKinley ushered in a period of four or five 
years of enormous concentration of industry. Most of the great 
industrial units were formed during the period from the Spanish- 
American War to the death of Mark Hanna in 1904. The United 
States Steel Company, the new Standard Oil Company, and a score 
of other colossal industrial combinations were formed. In course 
of time the leadership of the Republican party became arrogant and 
reactionary. It proclaimed through some of its more extreme pro¬ 
ponents a sort of divine right of the economically fortunate to rule. 
Others manifested a brazen contempt for the public relation be¬ 
tween capitalists and politics. 

Big business Thus the year 1900 saw the domination of the 
dominated country by the group which directed the great eco- 

politics nomic forces of the North and East more firmly in¬ 

trenched than at any previous period in history. A 
group of businessmen politicians such as Hanna, Platt, Penrose, and 
Aldrich, were in practical control of the government. Their allies 
on the one side were the masters of active business life, while on 
the other hand they achieved their control of the party through the 
agency of the party politicians of lesser rank. However, it would 
be unfair to say that the big business interests wete entirely Re¬ 
publican in character. They sought control of the Democratic 
party also wherever the party happened to be in possession of the 
government of a city or state. One of the most illuminating bits 
of the history of that time is the testimony of the sugar king, Have- 
meyer, in an investigation held in 1894. In answer to the question 
whether he contributed to the funds of both parties he answered 
very frankly: 

“Yes, we always contribute to both parties. In New York 

where the Democratic majority is always between 30,000 and 

40,000 we throw it their way. In Massachusetts the Republicans 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


23 


have the call. Wherever there is a dominant party, wherever the 
majority is large, that is the party which gets the contribution 
because that is the party that controls the local matters. 

Against this kind of influence in government the only rebellions 
which had taken place were the Bryan Campaigns of 1896 and later 
of 1900. But the Bryan opposition was always from the point of 
view of a rural lawyer. It had no conception of the forces, prob¬ 
lems, and responsibilities of modern industrial life. It was, there¬ 
fore, destined to remain merely a voice crying in the wilderness 
against the greed and sin of a group whose quality of greed and 
whose modes of sin it never fully comprehended. 


Roosevelt led In 1901 and thereafter, there arose from all parts 
new dissent of the country voices of protest against what some 
called the “Plutocracy.” This protest appeared in 
many local communities where the “Plutocracy” appeared in the 
form of franchise grabbers. The nine years’ struggle in Cleveland 
between a clear majority of the voters led by Tom L. Johnson and 
the street railway interests is the best example of this local dissent 
with the dominating order of things. Hughes fought the same 
battle in New York State against the insurance interests, and Hiram 
Johnson later found the Southern Pacific Railway Company in con¬ 
trol of the political affairs of his state. At the same time, a group 
of “Muck Rakers” appeared in the popular magazines. These 
writers revealed in a more or less dramatic manner the unholy 
alliance between business and politics. Finally Roosevelt, himself, 
gave powerful aid to the movement of dissent. President Roose¬ 
velt has been roundly scored because his protest was practically all 
vocal, and because at the end of his term of office no effort had been 
made to back up denunciation with concerted action of the govern¬ 
ment But his influence in forming a public opinion in which con¬ 
structive work could be done was unmistakable. He gave definite¬ 
ness and coherence to the work of the earlier Progressives. In d 
sense he “sold” progressivism to the masses of the people. 


Progressives’ 
pledge to 
voters 


The great Progressive movement crystalized dur¬ 
ing the administration of President Taft and finally 
the issue was clearly joined in the campaign of 
1912. The Progressive movement was quite well 


24 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


defined in the Progressive platform of that year. This platform 
which was called a “contract with the people” can be divided into 
three parts: 

“Political reforms, labor and social measures, and control of 
trusts and combinations. The first embraced declarations in favor 
of direct primaries, including preferential presidential primaries, 
popular election of United States Senators, the short ballot, the 
initiative, referendum, and recall, an easier method of amending 
the Federal Constitution, woman suffrage, limitation and publicity 
of campaign expenditures, and the recall of judicial decisions in 
the form of a popular review of any decision annulling a law 
passed under the police powder of the state. The program of labor 
and social legislation included the limitation of the use of the in¬ 
junction in labor disputes, prohibition of child labor, minimum 
wage standards for women, the establishment of minimum stand¬ 
ards as to health and safety of employees and conditions of labor 
generally, the creation of a labor department at Washington, and 
the improvement of country life. 

The Progressives took a decided stand against indiscriminate 
trust dissolutions, declaring that great combinations were in some 
degree inevitable and necessary for national and international 
efficiency. The evils of stock watering and unfair competitive 
methods should be eliminated and the advantages and economies 
of concentration conserved. To this end, they urged the establish¬ 
ment of a Federal commission to maintain a supervision over cor¬ 
porations engaged in interstate commerce, analogous to that ex¬ 
ercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission. As to railway 
corporations, they favored physical valuation. They demanded the 
retention of the natural resources, except agricultural lands, by 
the governments, state and national, and their utilization for public 
benefit. They favored a downward revision of the tariff on a 
protective basis, income and inheritance taxes, the protection of 
the public against stock gamblers and promoters and public owner¬ 
ship of railways in Alaska.” 1 

Opposed to the new Progressive party with Roosevelt as can- 
didate and to the Republican party headed by President Taft, was 
the Democratic party with Woodrow Wilson as its candidate/ Mr. 
Wilson s appeal in this campaign can be found in his book on “The 

l C. A. Beard, “Contemporary American History,” Chapter 13. 


THE FORCES THAT MAKE PARTIES 


25 


New Freedom.” The following is a statement of Wilson’s ideas 
of 1912 summarized by a very keen student of modern politics } 

“ ‘Absolutely free enterprise/ was Mr. Wilson’s leading phrase. 

The restoration of freedom for every person to go into business for 
himself was the burden of his appeal: ‘Are you not eager for 
the time when the genius and initiative of all the people shall be 
called into the service of business? .... when your sons 
shall be able to look forward to becoming not employees, but heads 
of some small, it may be, but hopeful business, where their best 
energies shall be inspired by the knowledge that they are their 
own masters with the paths of the world before them . . . 

and every avenue of commercial and industrial activity leveled for 
the feet of all who would tread it?’ 

“Mr. Wilson’s economic system seems to be susceptible of the 
following summary. The great trusts- are ‘unnatural products,’ 
not of competition, but of the unwillingness of men to face com¬ 
petition and of unfair practices. Big business is the product of 
genuine services to the community, and it should be allowed to 
destroy whom it can by fairly underselling honest goods. The 
enemy is, therefore, the trust; it is the trust that has taken away 
the ‘freedom’ which we once had in the United States. The remedy 
is inevitably the dissolution of the trusts, the prohibition of un¬ 
fair practices in competition—when will follow as night the day 
that perfect freedom which is as new wine to a sick nation. With 
competition ‘restored’ and maintained by government prosecution 
of offenders, no one need have a master unless he chooses.^ . 

It was a call to arms, 'but it did not indicate the weapons.” 


Democrats 

adopted 

progressive 

politics 


The Democratic party under Mr. Wilson’s leader¬ 
ship during the years from 1913 to 1916 found the 
task of restoring an outworn economic theory im¬ 
possible of achievement, and consequently the con¬ 
structive legislation of that period was all in the direc- 
tion of the reforms indicated by Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” 
rather than Wilson’s “New Freedom.” This shift in the policy of 
the Democratic party probably insured Mr. Wilson’s re-election m 
1916 for at that time he was supported by a very large number 
of former Progressives who felt that the achievements of the Demo- 

1 c. A. Beard, “Contemporary American History,” Chapter 13. 


26 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


cratic party indicated that it partially understood the reforms neces¬ 
sary to bring modern business practices into closer conformity with 
the interests of the public. 

The great issues raised by the European war completely over¬ 
shadowed domestic affairs during the years immediately follow¬ 
ing. The campaign of 1920 was fought largely upon inter¬ 
national questions. Admiration for or dislike of the personality of 
Wilson colored the decision of a great majority of voters, and so 
the old economic issues for the time being were forgotten. 

The Origin and Nature of American Political Parties 
In the Light of History 

We have considered in this chapter four of the great party 
movements in the United States. Three of these were successful 
and resulted in the formation of a political party which held the 
balance of power for a long time. One movement, the Bryan 
Movement of 1896, failed to capture the government, and because 
of new economic factors, its power was dissipated during the suc¬ 
ceeding years. It is quite clear, then, when we consider the cir¬ 
cumstances under which the great permanent parties have arisen, 
that they do not come from mere intellectual movements but are 
rooted in great economic issues. There can be little question in 
the light of recent historical research that economic groups are 
responsible for the formation of great political parties in America. 

The history of parties of the United States also indicates that 
after an important political party has achieved control of the gov¬ 
ernment and has held this control for some time, the economic in¬ 
terests back of it secure the protection or power that they sought 
and gradually become a less important factor in party administra¬ 
tion. The party then falls into the hands of political routineers who 
conduct a semblance of party conflicts without asserting positive 
principles. This tendency is well illustrated in the Whig and 
Democratic parties of 1850 and the Republican and Democratic 
parties of recent years. It is the purpose of the next chapter to 
picture the processes by which a party as a going concern is 
operated and controlled. 


CHAPTER II 


NATIONAL POLITICS TODAY—THEIR POLICIES AND METHODS 
National Party Policies 

T HE preceding chapter sought to describe how a great party 
may come into being. It indicated how in a number of in¬ 
stances in our history, national parties have been created out 
of widespread differences of opinion and interest on great economic 
questions. It also pointed out how after a party has been created 
out of such forces, it proceeds to use the government of which it 
has acquired control to enact into law the purposes for which the 
party was born. All of this is a healthy process in a free govern¬ 
ment. A modern democracy such as ours provides within itself 
the instrumentalities needed to provide the economic changes de¬ 
manded by a majority of the voters. It makes possible, by the 
action of great parties, the changes which in more autocratic govern¬ 
ments require revolution or costly upheavals in social and economic 
life. 

Party as a But the histories of parties in the United States 

going concern also teaches that after a party has been created 
out of great economic and social forces, it is per¬ 
petuated as a mere method for the operation of the government. 
It loses its original distinctive character and becomes colored by 
the opportunism of the politicians in control. And party conflicts 
instead of being great national referendums for the settlement of 
vital questions, become mere contests to determine which group of 
party managers shall fill the offices of government. Great parties 
born of those vital differences which affect deeply and funda¬ 
mentally the interest of all, grow into a maturity of weak and often 
hypocritical opportunism, from which all semblance of popular 
concern or interest has departed. 

This chapter seeks to analyze present party antagonisms, to 
point out the similarities and differences in party policies, and to 


28 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


describe and to criticise the practical operation of parties as in¬ 
struments through which the people of the United States govern 
themselves. 

The National Campaign of 1920 saw seven parties in the field. 
These were the Republican, Democratic, Socialist, Farmer-Labor, 
Single Tax, Prohibition, and Socialist Labor. 1 

The Policies of the Major Parties Today 

National Without doubt, the historian, writing an account 

parties in 1920 of the campaign of 1920, will say that the battle 
was fought upon the issue of the League of Na¬ 
tions. In fact, generous parts of the party platforms were given to 
the League and both candidates in their public utterances gave it 
primary attention. A careful analysis of platforms and speeches, 
however, reveals such subtle, almost confusing distinctions, such a 
vast exposition of facts which both sides took for granted, and 
such a manifest desire to conciliate factions within both parties, that 
the detached seeker for the “issue” is likely to yield to confusion 
if not despair. 

Major party His confusion would not be lessened if he were 

policies not to examine the opinions of the supporters of each 
distinguishable of the candidates. He would note that William H. 

Taft and A. Lawrence Lowell, founders and of¬ 
ficers of the League to Enforce Peace, were among the supporters 
of Mr. Harding. He would also observe the Republican loyalty of 
the inexorable opponents of American participation in a league of 
nations. He would see Hiram Johnson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Ray- 

l In 1908 six parties participated in the campaign: the Republican, Democratic, People’s 
Independence, Socialist, Socialist Labor, and Prohibition. In 1912 there were six, the 
Democratic, Republican, Progressive, Socialist, Socialist Labor, and Prohibition. In 1916 
there were also six, the Democratic, Republican, Socialist, Socialist Labor, American, and 
Prohibition. 

The relative strength of these parties is indicated by the following popular vote cast for 


each candidate: 

Harding (Republican) . 16,140,585 

Cox (Democratic) . 9,141,621 

Debs (Socialist) . 914,980 

Christensen (Farmer-Labor) . 272,002 

Watkins (Prohibitionist) .. 188,678 







NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


29 


mond Robbins, and Elihu Root agreed in only one thing, opposition 
to the Democratic party being retained in power. He would see 
equally irreconcilable opponents supporting the Democratic posi¬ 
tion agreeing, however, upon one proposition, opposition to the re¬ 
turn of the Republican party to power. Although it would be 
unfair to assert that there was no issue between the candidates 
upon the specific question of whether the United States should 
enter the Versailles League of Nations, it can be asserted with 
certainty that upon the vital question whether the United States 
should become a member of some sort of an international asso¬ 
ciation or league or federation, there was no difference at all be¬ 
tween the leaders of both parties. 

With the exception of the question of the League, it would be 
difficult to determine whether the major parties in 1920 differed in 
any vital respects upon other questions. An idea of this similarity 
may be gained from a comparative study of the party declarations 
upon great economic questions of the day, issues upon which great 
groups in this country unquestionably hold contradictory opinions. 
Wherever a great economic group interest is involved, the parties, 
as now constituted, may be counted upon to take such a position as 
to confuse and divide the group in question. The following com¬ 
parison of party declarations upon such questions will illustrate the 
similarity of the two party policies. 


Platform Declarations In 1920 
TAXATION 


Democratic 

“We advocate tax reform and a 
searching revision of the War 
Revenue Acts to fit peace condi¬ 
tions so that the wealth of the 
nation may not be withdrawn from 
productive enterprise and diverted 
to wasteful or non-productive ex¬ 
penditure.” 


Republican 

“An early reduction of the 
amount of revenue to be raised is 
not to be expected . . . sound 

policy equally demands the early 
accomplishment of that real reduc¬ 
tion of the tax burden which may 
be achieved by substituting simple 
for complex tax laws and procedure 
. . . tax laws which do not, for 

tax laws which do, excessively 
mulct the consumer or needlessly 
repress enterprise and thrift.” 


30 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


BANKING AND 
Democratic 

“The non-partisan Federal Re¬ 
serve authorities . . . have 

used courageously though cau¬ 
tiously the instruments at their 
disposal to prevent undue expan¬ 
sion of credit in the country 

. . . the inevitable war inflation 

has been held down to a mini¬ 
mum . . 

INDUSTRIAL 

Democratic 

“We recognize the right of col¬ 
lective bargaining. 

“Resort to strikes and lockouts 
which endanger the health or lives 
of the people is an unsatisfactory 
device for determining disputes 
. . . with respect to government 

service we hold . . . that the 

rights of the people are paramount 
to the right to strike. 

“The Democratic party pledges 
itself to contrive, if possible, a fair 
and comprehensive method of set¬ 
tling strikes and lockouts. 

“Laws regulating hours of labor 
and conditions under which labor 
is performed . . . are just as¬ 

sertions of the national interest in 
the welfare of the people. . . .” 


CURRENCY 

Republican 

“The war, to a great extent, was 
financed by a policy of inflation 
through certificate borrowing from 
banks, and bonds issued at arti¬ 
ficial rates sustained by the low 
discount rates established by the 
Federal Reserve Board. The con¬ 
tinuance of this policy since the 
armistice lays the administration 
open to severe criticism.” 

RELATIONS 

Republican 

“Labor, as well as capital, has 
the indefeasible right ... of 
collective bargaining. 

“The strike or the lockout 
. . . inflicts such loss and suf¬ 

fering upon the community as to 
justify government initiative to re¬ 
duce its frequency and limit its 
consequences. 

“We deny the right to strike 
against the government. . . . 

“In public utilities we favor 
. . . an impartial tribunal 

. . . to render a decision . . . 

morally but not legally binding. 
. . . In private industries we 

favor impartial commissions and 
better facilities for voluntary 
mediation, conciliation and arbitra¬ 
tion.” 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


31 


AGRICULTURE 


Democratic 

“We favor . . . right of co¬ 

operative handling and marketing 
of the products of the . . . farm. 

“We pledge to sustain, amplify, 
and perfect the Rural Credit Stat¬ 
utes and thus check and reduce the 
course of farm tenantry. 

“We favor comprehensive studies 
of farm production costs and un¬ 
censored publication of facts found 
in such studies. . . 


Republican 

“Present agricultural conditions 
. . . can be improved by . . • 
the right to form co-operative as¬ 
sociations for marketing . . • 

products. 

“The Federal Farm Loan Act 
should be so administered as to fa¬ 
cilitate the acquisition of farm land 
. . . and thus minimize . . . 
farm tenantry. 

“The . . . study of agricul¬ 

tural prices and farm production 
costs and . . . the uncensored 

publication of such reports. . 


PROFITEERING 


Democratic 

“We pledge the Democratic party 
to the enactment of legislation to 
bring profiteers before the bar of 
criminal justice. 

“We pledge the policy of our 
party to the continued growth of 
our Merchant Marine under proper 
legislation so that American prod¬ 
ucts will be carried to all parts by 
vessels built in American yards, fly¬ 
ing the American flag.” 


Republican 

“We condemn the Democratic ad¬ 
ministration for failure ... to 
enforce the anti-profiteering laws 
enacted by the Republican Con¬ 
gress. 

“The national defense and our 
foreign commerce require a mer¬ 
chant marine . . . flying the 

American flag, manned by Ameri¬ 
can seamen, owned by private capi¬ 
tal and operated by private en¬ 
ergy.” 


1920 election The campaign and election of 1920 was not a 
not national great national referendum upon policies such as the 
referendum country witnessed in 1800, 1828, 1860, and 1896. It 
was, in the last analysis, a contest between two 
party organizations for control of the government Most of those 
who voted, frankly recognized this and gave as their reasons for 
voting, either an opinion toward a president who, in either event, 


32 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


was leaving the White House anyway, or a belief in the superiority 
of one or the other group of party men to conduct the affairs of 
government. When an election takes place which is marked by an 
absence of issues, one finds two points of view very widely in¬ 
fluencing the choice of voters. One of these is a backward-looking 
desire to punish or reward a service already completed. Such votes 
are cast not for the purpose of selecting intelligently a public ser¬ 
vant for the most important position in the nation, perhaps in the 
world, to serve during four critical years, they are used resentfully 
to punish or sentimentally to reward a task already finished. They 
are the votes of those who care more for the past than for the 
future. 

Another view, more logical than the one already described, is 
the selection of one or the other party as an instrument of govern¬ 
ment rather than as a representative of a national policy. For ex¬ 
ample, many people gave as their reason for voting: “The Re¬ 
publican party has among its leaders more men of administrative 
ability; it could with these men in office conduct the government 
more efficiently than the Democratic party which has fewer men 
experienced in administrative affairs/’ Others following the same 
kind of reasoning voted for the Democratic candidate because they 
believed that “the Democratic party leaders are closer to the masses 
of the people, more able to give the people the kind of government 
they will understand.” 

Both of these reasons for voting do not recognize a national 
election as a time for the determination of vital policies affecting 
the interests of large sections of the people. The effect of the 
acceptance of these reasons for voting by large numbers of voters 
turns the parties into mere organizations for filling the offices of 
government rather than for representing the policies which mean so 
much to the peaceful adjustment of the interests of the people of the 
nation. They give an incentive and an excuse for all of the avoid¬ 
ance of vital issues and the resulting hypocrisy and deceit with 
which machine rule is always dominated. 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


33 


Socialists not The Socialist Party had a national ticket and a 
real national platform in the field in 1920. Its candidates were 

party Eugene V. Debs and Seymour Stedman. The votes 

received by this ticket numbered 914,980. The pro¬ 
portion of votes cast for the Socialist ticket has shown no appre¬ 
ciable growth in twenty years. In only one 1 year, 1920, has the 
Socialist vote been over four percent of the total cast. Moreover, 
in 1920 it is probable that the vote for Debs was considerably, aug¬ 
mented by a large number who voted for him in protest against his 
imprisonment rather than because of sympathy for the doctrines 
of the party. It should be noted, too, that seventy-eight percent of 
the votes for Debs came from ten states while in twenty-three 
states his vote was under five thousand. The Socialist Party is 
not a real national party now, nor does its history indicate that it 
is likely to become one. 

One-half of the space taken up by the Socialist platform deals 
with the faults of the present administration and ends with a call 
to all who believe in bringing about "complete industrial freedom/’ 
to prepare for a complete reorganization of our social system, 
based: "upon public ownership of public necessities; upon govern¬ 
ment by representatives chosen from occupational as well as from 
geographical groups, in harmony with our industrial development; 
and with citizenship based on service; that we may end forever the 
exploitation of class by class.” 

The remainder of the platform sets forth the Socialist program 
which embraces the following points: 

“All business including transportation, banking, national in¬ 
dustry, and insurance should be taken over by the nation to be 
administered jointly by the government and representatives of the 
workers. Laws should be passed abolishing child labor, fixing mini¬ 
mum wages and a shorter working day. 

“The power of courts should be restricted in labor cases and in 
their power to declare laws unconstitutional. Federal judges should 
be elected subject to recall. The President should be elected by 
popular election subject to recall and the cabinet elected by Con¬ 
gress Provision should be made for the voting of migratory citi¬ 
zens and civil liberty should be more adequately safeguarded. 


34 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


“All loans by the United States to allied countries should be 
canceled if those nations will likewise cancel their debts. The 
‘largest possible’ assistance should be given to the stricken people 
of Europe. The present League of Nations should be abolished and 
there should be established an international parliament democrati¬ 
cally elected. Peace should be made with the central powers and 
relations begun with Russia; Ireland should be recognized; and 
American capitalists who make investments or acquire concessions 
in foreign countries do so at their own risk. 

“War debts should be paid in full by means of a levy of a 
progressive property tax; a standing progressive income tax and a 
graduated inheritance tax should be levied for meeting all the costs 
of government; and all land held out of use should be taxed for 
full rental value.” 

The Farmer-Labor party was in large part brought into being 
by the efforts of a number of local political Labor parties, assisted 
by members of the Committee of Forty-Eight, a group of liberals 
who formulated a program at a conference held in St. Louis in De¬ 
cember, 1919. The party nominated for President, Parley P. 
Christensen of Utah and for Vice President, Max S. Hayes of Ohio. 
The party received a popular vote of 272,002. This party received 
votes in only twenty states. 1 

Great issues Small “third parties” have played a very impor- 
rise in minor tant part in the history of the United States al- 
parties though not one has ever risen to the dignity of a 

major party. They have come into being usually to 
represent some minority class interest and have often maintained 
an existence during several campaigns. The Populist Party lived 
for a generation. While minor parties have seldom acquired any 
considerable power, their principles have often become, in time, a 
part of the law of the land. For example, a great number of the 
principles and reforms proposed in 1888 and 1892 by the Populist 
party have since become policies of one of the major parties and 
have been enacted into law. In a real sense then the “third” party 
is a very healthy manifestation of political action. 

l See the “World Almanac for 1921” for the complete platforms of all parties. 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


35 


Economic One of the clearest indications that the national 
groups not parties do not definitely represent economic groups is 
partisan found in the attitudes of these groups themselves. 

Labor, capital, agriculture, and other less important 
economic interests are all bi-partisan or non-partisan in their 
activity. One will find in a national campaign a division of in¬ 
dividuals within these groups upon party lines similar to divisions 
within the country as a whole. Labor is divided between two 
major parties on lines not unlike those dividing the farmers. While 
it may be said as a general proposition that those prominent in the 
direction of financial and industrial affairs are Republican, a man by 
no means loses status in his economic group if he supports the 
Democratic party. This is very interesting when it is considered 
in connection with the fact that in great crises such as 1896, an 
individual who broke from the party which represented the interests 
of his own class was considered almost as a traitor and an outcast. 


A. F. of L. The stand of labor in the United States is ex¬ 

reconstruction pressed in the following quotation from the re¬ 
program, construction program of the American Federation 

December, 1918 of Labor passed in 1918. 

“The disastrous experience of organized labor in America, with 
political parties of its own, amply justified the A. F. of L.’s non¬ 
partisan political policy. The results secured by labor parties in 
other countries never have been such as to warrant any deviation 
from this position. . . . Trade union activities cannot receive 

the undivided attention of members and officers if the exigencies, 
burdens, and responsibilities of a political party are bound up with 
their economic and industrial organizations. 

“The experiences and results attained through the non-partisan 
political policy of the A. F. of L. cover a generation. They indicate 
that through its application the workers of America have secured 
a much larger measure of fundamental legislation, establishing 
their rights, safeguarding their interests, protecting their welfare 
and opening the doors of opportunity than have been secured by 
the workers of any other country. The vital legislation now re¬ 
quired can be more readily secured through education of the public 
mind and the appeal to its conscience, supplemented by energetic 
independent political activity on the part of trade unionists, than 


36 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


by any other method. This is and will continue to be the political 
policy of the A. F. of L. if the lessons which Labor has learned in 
the bitter but practical school of experience are to be respected and 
applied.” 

One of the interesting facts which illustrates the lack of im¬ 
portance of economic groups in party alignments is the great num¬ 
ber of special interest lobbies which have grown up in Washington. 
Our Congress and national administration is literally surrounded 
by great organizations which are intended to further the interests 
of large economic groups. Perhaps the most permanent examples 
are the United States Chamber of Commerce, the American Federa¬ 
tion of Labor, the National Grange, and a number of other power¬ 
ful and influential organizations which have their headquarters in 
Washington. Thus Congress, in itself representative merely of two 
parties which have no essential difference, is looked upon as a 
governing agency which should be influenced by a number of great 
organized interests. 

The organiza- The nominating process is the vital element in 
tion and meth- all political procedure. If party organizations can 
ods of national control nominations a partisan election is usually 
parties assured. Especially true is this of the election 

of the President. So from the beginning of party 
history much importance has been placed upon the nomination. 
Early in the history of political life in the United States, nomina¬ 
tions for the presidency were made by the congressional caucus. 
Each party gathered together its members of Congress and selected 
its presidential candidate. In the administration of Monroe and 
Adams, however, “King Caucus” as it was called, became very un¬ 
popular with the masses of people. It was said that Congress was 
controlled by a mere oligarchy which named the presidents and 
shaped national legislation. In the nominations which preceded the 
election of John Quincy Adams, a great deal of opposition was found 
to this method of selecting a candidate. Jackson felt that he had 
been cheated out of the presidency by a corrupt bargain, and his 
opposition to the congressional caucus became very violent. The 
caucus died after 1828 and was succeeded by the national conven¬ 
tion, Very little improvement has been made in the national con¬ 
vention since the days of Jackson and Van Buren. 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


37 


The national convention consists in the main of a group of 
delegates selected from the congressional districts of the various 
states. The number to which a state is entitled is twice the number 
of representatives and senators elected to Congress by that state. 
The four delegates who represent the senators are selected at large 
either by a state-wide vote or by a state convention. 

How convention Prior to 1912, the delegates were almost uni- 
is made up versally chosen under the convention system. 

Since then, however, the choice of delegates by 
some form of the direct primary method has been rapidly displacing 
the convention system. In Ohio, for example, delegates to the na¬ 
tional convention are selected at a primary. Conventions or pri¬ 
maries frequently direct or instruct their delegates to support cer¬ 
tain candidates. After the first few ballots, however, the instruc¬ 
tions of delegates are not usually considered binding. 

Primaries Direct primaries for the choice of delegates to 

give preference the national convention may, and generally do, 
of voters afford some means whereby the voters may indi¬ 

cate their preferences as to who shall be the 
presidential nominee of the party. Where such provision is made, 
the primary is more appropriately called the “presidential prefer¬ 
ence primary.” Such expressions of preference may be made either 
directly or indirectly. Where the indirect preference primary exists, 
candidates for election as delegates are permitted to state on the 
primary ballot their preference for the presidential nomination, or 
they may state that they have no preference, or make no statement 
whatever in the matter. By voting for delegates whose preferences 
are made known in some such way, the voter indirectly indicates 
his own presidential preference. Preferences may be expressed 
directly in states where a place on the primary ballot is provided 
for the voter to indicate his preference, the names of the aspirants 
for the presidential nomination being either printed upon the pri¬ 
mary ballot or written in by the voter. It is not uncommon, also, 
to find primary laws which provide for both the direct and the in¬ 
direct method of indicating presidential preferences on the same 
ballot. The impotence of these laws is indicated by the small num¬ 
ber of votes cast for the candidates in the primaries in 1920. 1 

1 See page 43. 


38 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


In many cases where there are strongly opposing candidates 
for the nomination, there will be disputes as to the legitimacy of 
certain delegations. In other words, there will be two or more 
delegations from a state claiming the right to be seated in the con¬ 
vention. The decision as to the temporary roll of the convention 
rests with the National Committee. The two last functions of the 
convention are the nominating of president and vice president and 
the adoption of the party platform. 

When a convention assembles, a temporary chairman is se¬ 
lected who delivers what is known as a “key-note speech.” This 
speech is, in a sense, the rallying cry or the expression of policy for 
the campaign. The four great committees of the convention are 
then selected. These committees are: Resolutions, Credentials, 
Permanent Organization, and Rules. These committees each num¬ 
ber forty-eight and are chosen by the state delegations, each delega¬ 
tion appointing a member for each committee. 

How When the committee on permanent organization re¬ 

convention ports its officers, and its recommendations are ac- 
functions cepted, the permanent chairman of the convention 
takes his place. He also delivers a “key-note speech.” 
The committee on resolutions then presents the party platform 
which is usually accepted by the convention without change. The 
next order of business is the placing of names in nomination. This 
is done by calling the roll of the states and each state has the oppor¬ 
tunity to place a candidate in nomination. In case a state has no 
candidate to propose, it has the privilege of yielding its place to a 
state farther down the list. The number of candidates nominated 
is seldom less than six or seven and sometimes is as great as ten 
or twelve. The nomination speeches are always carefully prepared 
and delivered eulogies of the person who is being placed in nomina¬ 
tion. After the nominations the balloting takes place. This is ac¬ 
complished by means of a roll call of the states. As the name of 
each state is called, the chairman of the delegation announces how 
the delegates from that state vote. In order to win the nomination, 
a candidate in the Democratic Convention must receive the' votes 
of two-thirds of the delegates, while in the Republican Convention 
a bare majority is sufficient to nominate. For this latter reason the 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


39 


number of ballots taken in the Democratic Convention is often very 
great. For example President Wilson was not nominated until the 
46th ballot. In the Democratic Convention there existed until 1912 
what was known as the “Unit Rule.” According to this, the entire 
state delegation must be given to one single candidate, the name 
of the candidate who receives this vote being determined by a ma¬ 
jority vote of the delegation. In 1912, the Democratic Convention 
modified the “Unit Rule.” 

The National The National Committee is the general staff of 
Committee each party organization. It is made up of forty- 

the general eight members, one from each state. 1 A national 

staff committeeman for a state is usually chosen for four 

years by the delegation of the party at the National 
Convention. The duties of the National Committee are very im¬ 
portant. The National Committee with its chairman has complete 
charge of the political campaign. It determines the policies to be 
followed by the party in appealing to the public, it collects the nec¬ 
essary party funds, it apportions these funds according to the needs 
of the campaign, and it directs in a general way the activities of 
each state organization in the national election. Moreover, the 
National Committee has the very important function of preparing 
for the National Convention held four years after its election. The 
Republican National Committee, in 1912, was so active in defeating 
the nomination of Roosevelt and in insuring the nomination of Taft, 
that a movement was started to elect tne committee in some other 
way than by a state election. 

The National The National Chairman is the general-in-chief of 
Chairman the the campaign. He is in fact selected by the Na- 
commander tional Committee, but in practice the National 
Committee follows the wishes of the presidential 
candidate. Some idea of the importance of his position can be 
gained from the following statement: 

“He must be a master of details, and at the same time capable 
of taking a correct view of the general situation and endowed with 
an unlimited capacity for hard work. He must possess the confi¬ 
dence of party leaders and have an almost intuitive grasp of the 

l Recently the Democratic party has enlarged its National Committee to ninety-six, to 
include a man and a woman from each state. 


40 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


popular feeling. He must keep in touch with every fibre of the 
organization, holding frequent conferences with state chairmen in 
the most important and doubtful states. He must be conciliatory, 
secretive yet approachable, keen in his choice of helpers, able to 
command the services of the most effective workers in the party, 
and capable of making them work in unison without overlapping.” 1 

The importance of the National Chairman’s position is well 
illustrated by what happened in 1916. The National Chairman, 
Mr. Wilcox, sent the presidential candidate, Mr. Hughes, into Cali¬ 
fornia to speak in behalf of the Republican ticket. Unfortunately, 
Mr. Wilcox did not seem to be well enough acquainted with the 
local situation in California to guard against having Mr. Hughes 
embroiled in a local factional contest within the party. On account 
of what happened during Mr. Hughes’ visit there, the impression 
went abroad in California that Mr. Hughes had preferred the old 
and discredited Republican organization to the Hiram Johnson fac¬ 
tion. The resentment of the people of California against this action 
was registered at election when Mr. Johnson was overwhelmingly 
elected senator while Mr. Hughes lost the state. 

The National Campaign 

The National Committee, as has already been indicated, is the 
general staff of the party in the presidential campaign. Its large 
size, however, together with the fact that its members live in such 
widely scattered parts of the country, prevents frequent meetings. 
The major part of the burden of managing the campaign, therefore, 
rests with its officers and a few specially capable and interested 
members. The chairman exercises practically autocratic power. 

He “disburses enormous sums of money collected by the treas¬ 
urer, directs the huge army of speakers, organizers, and publicity 
agents scattered over the Union, and as the day of election ap¬ 
proaches surveys the whole field with the eye of an experienced 
general, discovering weak places in his battle array, hurrying up 
re-enforcements to the doubtful states, and, perhaps, pouring an 
immense sum of money into districts where large numbers of 
wavering voters may be brought into line.” 2 

1 P. O. Ray, “Political Parties and Practical Politics,” pp. 235-236. 

2 Beard, “American Government and Politics,” p. 174. 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAi 


41 


The treasurer of the National Committee has the responsibility 
of securing the funds necessary for the campaign. To accomplish 
his task properly, he should be a man with experience in financial 
affairs, and have a wide acquaintance with men of wealth. Usually 
this position is filled by a business man, who is assisted by business 
men in state and local communities. Frequently the managers of 
a campaign estimate in advance the amount that will be the goal 
in the solicitation, and apportion it among certain states and cities. 
In the campaign of 1920, it was charged by the Democratic can¬ 
didate, that the Republican committee was seeking to raise an ex¬ 
cessive amount for the campaign and his charges resulted in a con¬ 
gressional investigation. The funds collected are used for such 
purposes as printing, the expenses of speakers, and for local party 
workers. 

In 1920, the Democratic National Committee maintained head¬ 
quarters at New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. At the New 
York office there were maintained the following bureaus: speakers, 
publicity, women, naturalized citizens, and commercial. Perhaps 
the most important piece of “literature” prepared and issued by a 
national organization is the party “Text Book” which is a con¬ 
venient collection of material upon the campaign candidates and 
issued for the use of speakers and writers in the organization. In 
addition to this, printed material of all sorts is distributed to local 
divisions of the party forces. It is said that in 1896 the Republican 
Committee sent out “20,000 express packages, 5,000 freight pack¬ 
ages, and half a million packages by mail.” In addition to this 
mode of reaching the voters, the newspapers are more and more 
widely used for campaign advertising. Rural papers are given huge 
quantities of “boiler plate” material for the edification of their 
readers, while other papers are supplied with material for paid 
political advertising. 

The task of the Speakers’ Bureau is that of directing a large 
group of nationally known speakers. It has of late become 
customary for the candidate himself to appeal in person to the 
voters. Mr. Taft, in 1908, is reported “to have journeyed 18,500 
miles and to have made 436 speeches in 30 states.” In all cam¬ 
paigning, moreover, the doubtful states come in for the lion’s share 
of attention. 


42 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Some Characteristics of National Party Government 


An After the nominations in 1912 had shown to a 

undemocratic marked degree the defects in the convention system, 
nominating there was a notable movement of opinion in favor 
process of practically eliminating the convention as a nomi¬ 

nating body by the adoption of a national law to 
provide in all states the preferential primaries which were already 
existing in a small number. President Wilson said in his message 
to Congress in 1913: 


“• • • I feel confident that I do not misinterpret the wishes 
or the expectations of the country when I urge the prompt enact¬ 
ment of legislation which will provide for primary elections 
throughout the country at which the voters of the several parties 
may choose their nominees for the Presidency without the inter¬ 
vention of nominating conventions . . . This legislation should 

provide for the retention of party conventions, but only for the 
purpose of declaring and accepting the verdict of the primaries 
and formulating the platforms of the parties; and I suggest that 
these conventions should consist not of delegates chosen for this 
single purpose, but of the nominees for Congress, the nominees for 
vacant seats in the Senate of the United States, the senators whose 
terms have not yet closed, the national committees, and the candi¬ 
dates for the Presidency themselves, in order that platforms may 
be framed by those responsible to the people for carrying them 
into effect.” 


But the collapse of the Progressive movement and the coming 
of the war postponed, for the time being, any constructive changes 
in the method of nominating the president. The two conventions 
of 1920 revealed once more the lack of popular control over nomina¬ 
tions. The following statements of the actual popular vote in the 
states where presidential preference primaries were held, indicates 
not only the small number of citizens of the United States who 
actually expressed any opinion at all about nominees, but the small 
proportion of those voting who preferred the candidates finally 
nominated. 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


43 


Vote in Republican Presidential 
Primary Elections 


Vote in Democratic Presidential 
Primary Elections 


Johnson, Cal. 


.941,228 

Palmer, Penn. 

.... 91,550 

Wood, Mass. 


697,513 

Cox, Ohio . 

.... 86,111 

Lowden, Ill. 


.348,477 

McAdoo, N. Y. 

.... 74,078 

Hoover, Cal. 


.298,778 

Hitchcock, Neb. 

.... 37,452 

Harding, Ohio. 


.144,762 

Edwards, N. J. 

.... 27,654 

Sutherland, W. Va. 

. 61,461 

Bryan, Neb. 

.... 24,649 

Pershing, Neb. 


. 45,640 

Hoover, Cal. 

.... 24,367 

Webster, N. Y. 


. 4,531 

Ross, Neb. 

.... 13,179 

Simpson, Mich. 


. 3,857 

Gerard, N. Y. 

.... 4,906 

Poindexter, Wash. 


3,806 

Monroe, Ill. 

.... 1,906 

Ross, Neb. 


. 1,695 

Scattering . 

.... 4,071 

Baird, W. Va. 


757 



Scattering . 


. 6,113 



The men finally nominated were chosen not because of any- 

thing that happened before the convention in which the public took 

part, but after 

innumerable negotiations within the convention 

itself. Between the 

first ballot 

and the last, events took place 

which determined the final party choice, and those who believe in 

popular control 

over 

nominations 

cannot but see that these vital 

negotiations were not only entirely without sanction, but 

in most 

cases in secret conferences. The 

following statement of the vote 

for candidates in the first and last ballot indicates the shift in senti- 

ment which took place during the days of balloting: 




REPUBLICAN 



First 

10th 

First 

10th 


Ballot 

Ballot 

Ballot 

Ballot 

Harding . 

65 Ms 

692 1/5 

Du Pont . 7 


Wood .. 

287% 

156 

Knox . 


Lowden . 

211 Ms 

11 

Kellogg .-. 


Johnson . 

133 % 

80 4/5 

Lenroot . 

1 

Butler . 

69 

2 

Hays . 

1 

Sproul . 

83 M 


McGregor . 


Coolidge . 

34 

5 

Borah . 2 


La Follette . 

24 

24 

Watson . 


Pritchard . 

21 


Ward . 


Sutherland . 

17 


Warren . 1 


Poindexter . 

20 


Not voting . 1 

Ms 

Hoover . 

5Ms 

9M 































































44 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


DEMOCRATIC 



First 

44th 


Ballot 

Ballot 

Cox . 

.. 134 

732% 

McAdoo . 

. 266 

267 

Palmer . 

. 256 

1 

Smith . 

. 109 


Edwards . 

. 42 




First 

44th 


Ballot 

Ballot 

Cummings .... 

.... 25 


Davis .. 

.... 32 

52 

Gerard . 

.... 21 


Glass . 

.... 26% 

1% 


The whole method of selecting delegates, and the procedure 
for settling disputed delegations, are now practically all where they 
were in 1912, and could conceivably be used again in the manner 
described by Mr. Roosevelt in the following language: 

“Under the direction and with the encouragement of Mr. Taft, 
the majority of the National Committee, by the so-called steam 
roller methods, and with scandalous disregard of every principle of 
elementary honesty and decency, stole eighty or ninety delegates, 
putting on the temporary roll call a sufficient number of fraudulent 
delegates to defeat the legally expressed will of the people, and to 
substitute a dishonest for an honest majority. . . . 

“The convention has now declined to purge the roll of the 
fraudulent delegates placed thereon by the defunct national commit¬ 
tee, and the majority which has thus endorsed the fraud was made a 
majority only because it included the fraudulent delegates them¬ 
selves who all sat as judges on one another’s cases. . . The con¬ 

vention as now composed has no claim to represent the voters of 
the Republican party. . . . Any man nominated by the con¬ 

vention as now constituted would merely be the beneficiary of this 
successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable to any man to 
accept the convention’s nomination under these circumstances; and 
any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of 
any Republican on party grounds and would have forfeited the 
right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral 
grounds.” 

The Convention as a Maker of Presidents 

The convention The National Nominating Convention is prob¬ 
in action ably the best known and understood of all of our 

political institutions. Its externals are told to 
millions of readers in every newspaper. With feverish interest 















NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


45 


the people watch every turn in sentiment in the Convention 
and every shift in the balloting. To a greater extent than even 
the World’s Baseball Championship Series, it appeals to the 
sporting instincts of America. In actual fact, this most interest¬ 
ing of our institutions is, when arraigned before the bar of even 
handed justice, the most imperfect. Its holiday atmosphere, its 
fervid and unmeaning oratory, its uncontrolled passion, its secret 
conferences, bargainings and agreements, its removal from popular 
control, its hidden and devious mode of determining a statement 
of party principles, should brand it as an institution unfit for any 
government which even pretends to be democratic. Any scientific 
and sincere study of government must stand dismayed before this 
strange survival of.' the crudities of young and imperfect govern- 
ment. The wonder is that it has survived so long. The convention 
and its characteristics have never been more aptly described than 
in the following quotation: 

“A national convention represents more wasted energy, more 
futile, bootless endeavor, more useless expenditure of noise, money, 
and talent, than any other institution on earth. It has grown into 
a cumbersome, frightfully expensive, terribly laborious machine 
which spends months getting under way and once under way de¬ 
votes nine-tenths of its time of operation to buncombe and claptrap 
which deceives no one, not even the men who create this buncombe 
and claptrap. At last, when the shouters have grown weary and 
the lesser booms, being punctured, have lost the only thing they 
ever contained—which is wind—the real leaders go ahead and do 
the thing they might have done earlier, except for the belief among 
them that the fetish of tradition must be coddled, and the conven¬ 
tion, obeying an ancient precedent, must be permitted to drag out a 
foregone conclusion, which twice out of three times was a foregone 
one from the start.” 1 

The oratory of a national convention intended for its effect 
upon the mob psychology of the convention is fairly described in 
the following passage: 

“This brutal fact flowered up into flamboyant oratory. I shall 
not soon forget the nine and a half hours I sat wedged in, listening 
to the nominating speeches and subsisting on apple pie and logan- 


l Irvin S. Cobb, in the “Chicago American,” June 10, 1916. 


46 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


berry juice—hours of bellow and rant punctuated by screeches and 
roars. I think there were fifteen nominations plus the seconding 
orations. It was a nightmare, a witches’ dance of idiocy and adult 
hypocrisy. DuPont for instance, and his wonderful grandfather, 
and the grand old state of Ohio, and the golden state of Iowa, and 
the flag, red, white and blue, all its stripes, all its stars, and the flag 
again a thousand times over, and Americanism till your ears ached, 
and the slaves and the tariff, and Abraham Lincoln, mauled and 
dragged about and his name taken in vain and his spirit degraded, 
prostituted to every insincerity and used as window-dressing for 
every cheap politician. The incredible sordidness of that conven¬ 
tion passes all description. It was a gathering of insanitary, cal¬ 
lous men, who blasphemed patriotism, made a mockery of republi¬ 
can government and filled the air with sodden and scheming stu¬ 
pidity. The one note of freedom in those roaring days was during 
the demonstration for Roosevelt, when the sun suddenly appeared 
after days of rain. There was enough humanity left to cheer 
the sun.” 1 

Foreign view The greatest foreign observer of the operation of 
of convention democracy in America sums up the case against the 
National Convention as*follows: 

“At last, after a session of several days, the end is reached; 
the convention adjourns sine die. All is over. As you step out of 
the building you inhale, with relief the gentle breeze which tempers 
the scorching heat of July; you come to yourself; you recover 
your sensibility, which has been blunted by the incessant uproar, 
and your faculty of judgment, which has been held in abeyance 
amid the pandemonium in which day after day has been passed. 

You collect your impressions, and you realize what a colossal 
travesty of popular institutions you have just been witnessing. A 
greedy crowd of office-holders, or of office-seekers, disguised as 
delegates of the people, on the pretense of holding the grand 
council of the party, indulged in, or were the victims of, intrigues 
and manoeuvres, the object of which was the chief magistracy of 
the greatest Republic of the two hemispheres—the succession to 
the Washingtons and the Jeffersons. With an elaborate respect 
for forms extending to the smallest details of procedure, they 
pretended to deliberate, and then passed resolutions settled by a 
handful of wire-pullers in the obscurity of committees and private 

1 Lippman, W., at the Chicago convention, “The New Republic,” June 17, 1916. 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


caucuses; they proclaimed as the creed of the party appealing to 
its piety, a collection of hollow, vague phrases, strung together by a 
few experts in the art of using meaningless language, and adopted 
still more precipitately without examination and without convic¬ 
tion; with their hand upon their heart, they adjured the assembly 
to support aspirants in whose success they had not the faintest 
belief; they voted in public for candidates whom they were 
scheming to defeat. Cut off from their conscience by selfish calcu¬ 
lations and from their judgment by the tumultuous crowd of spec¬ 
tators, which alone made all attempt at deliberation an impossi¬ 
bility, they submitted without resistance to the pressure of the 
galleries masquerading as popular opinion, and made up of a claque 
and of a raving mob which, under ordinary circumstances, could 
only be formed by the inmates of all the lunatic asylums of the 
country who had made their escape at the same time. Here this 
mob discharges a great political function; it supplies the ‘enthu¬ 
siasm’ which is the primary element of the convention which does 
duty for discussion and controls all its movement. Produced to 
order of the astute managers, ‘enthusiasm’ is served out to the dele¬ 
gates as a strong drink, to gain complete mastery over their will. 
But in the fit of intoxication they yield to the most sudden impulses, 
dart in the most unexpected directions, and it is blind chance which 
has the last word. The name of the candidate for the presidency of 
the Republic, issues from the votes of the convention like a number 
from a lottery. And all the followers of the party, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, are bound on pain of apostasy, to vote for 
the product of that lottery. Yet, when you carry your thoughts 
from the scene which you have just witnessed and review the line 
of presidents, you find that if they have not all been great men— 
far from ih-they were all honorable men; and you cannot help 
repeating the American saying: ‘God takes care of drunkards, 
of little children, and of the United States ’!” 1 

Some Characteristics of National Party Government 

“Surely the ra.ce is not to the swift, nor the battle to the 
strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of 
understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance 
happeneth to them all.” 

l Ostrogorski, “Democracy,” Vol. II, pp. 278-279. 


48 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Mediocrity In these words from the scripture, James Bryce in 
an asset his “American Commonwealth” describes the reasons 
why, under the party system, it seems to be more of an 
asset to the man with political ambitions not to have positive 
opinions covering the issues which after election to office he will 
be compelled to meet. It is one of the true and tried'axioms of 
politics in America, that national political parties, in selecting their 
candidates, place a premium upon the individual candidate who is 
inexperienced in politics, who does not stand for any positive point 
of view, who has not long been a national figure, and who has not 
definitely taken a stand on any of the questions which are to be dis¬ 
cussed in the campaign. For example, William McKinley, prior 
to the convention which nominated him in 1896, had steadfastly 
refused to state his position on the money question which of course 
was the dominant question of the hour. The New York news¬ 
papers were viciously attacking McKinley and Hanna for what 
they called his sympathy with the Free Silver cause. But his 
failure to take a stand on this question was probably the very factor 
which made his nomination possible. The democratic nomination 
of Governor Cox in 1920 was not unlike that of McKinley. Mr. 
Cox had not definitely associated himself with the Wilson adminis¬ 
tration, and his strength as a candidate was in the fact that he was 
not associated with Wilson and that he did not represent the so- 
called Wilson policies. Men are nominated as candidates and not 
as potential presidents. The qualifications which the convention 
considers are not the qualifications of a president, but the charac¬ 
teristics which will draw votes. A liberal journal just before the 
conventions of 1916 published the following ironical editorial: 

“Wanted: Executive head of a large concern about to enter 
field of world competition; previous experience undesirable. Must 
have magnetic presence and investigation-proof past; must be able 
to put over blend of safe progressivism and sane reaction; should 
be agitator who can whip up surface without stirring depths; will 
need ability to soothe business with high tariff and the people with 
his charm; must never have antagonized Roman Catholic, Greek 
Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Mormon, Orthodox 
Jewish, Reformed Jewish, Mason, Odd Fellows, or Elks vote; must 
not drink, but not be hostile to liquor vote; must have lived a 
spotless life, yet be known as a man; must favor Allies but 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


49 


not against Germans; must talk well about honor but preserve the 
peace; must be for preparedness and a reduction of taxes; must 
guarantee prosperity; must preach economy but remember his 
friends; must fear no precedent but revere the Constitution. In 
words of former incumbent, applicant must be like Caesar’s wife— 
that is to say, all things to all men.” 

How money is One of the most dangerous and sinister ten- 
used in national dencies in the politics of the present generation 
politics is the use of large sums of money in conducting 

campaigns. While public opinion is quick to 
react against a candidate or party which uses excessive sums in 
political activity, and while both nation and states have enacted a 
large amount of legislation designated to check and regulate the 
use of money in politics, there is a constant danger of its recurrence. 
Both the pre-convention campaign and the subsequent contest be¬ 
tween the two parties were marked by serious charges of excessive 
expenditures of money. In March, 1920, Senator Borah denounced 
two of the Republican candidates for the nomination, General 
Wood and Governor Lowden, charging that they “had apparently 
turned themselves over to a coterie of men of vast wealth” and 
were “permitting those men to conduct their campaign.” The 
Senator stated further that the situation “has every appearance of 
an attempt to deliberately control with money the National Con¬ 
vention.” Senator Borah’s resolution calling for the investigation 
of the campaign expenditures of all candidates for the nomination 
was passed, and a sub-committee of the Senate under the chairman¬ 
ship of Senator Kenyon conducted an extended investigation which 
was later continued until after the November election. The final 
report of this committee indicated the following expenditures in 
the preconvention campaigns of candidates: 

REPUBLICAN 


Wood . 

.$1,773,303 

Poindexter . 

. 77,150 

Lowden . 

. 414,984 

Coolidge . 

. 58,375 

Johnson . 

. 194,393 

Butler . 

. 40,550 

Hoover . 

. 173,542 

Sutherland .. 

. 4,145 

Harding . 

. 113,100 













50 

PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 



DEMOCRATIC 


Palmer . 

.$59,616 

Gerard . 

. 14,040 

Cox . 

. 22,000 

Owen . 

. 8,595 

Edwards . 

. 12,900 

Hitchcock. 

. 3,337 


A number of serious disclosures were made during the sessions 
of this committee. One of the most sensational was that a large 
part of the Wood fund was contributed by one man, William C. 
Procter, a soap manufacturer of Cincinnati. He testified that he 
had contributed and advanced a total of $721,000 to the Wood cam¬ 
paign. It was also indicated that Governor Lowden had paid out 
of his own pocket approximately $379,000. In Ohio, where a hard 
contest was waged for the delegates, it was estimated by one wit¬ 
ness that each side had spent $100,000 in the state. Disclosures as 
to the careless if not irregular use of funds by Lowden managers 
in Missouri probably had a very serious effect upon the Lowden 
candidacy in the convention. In the Kenyon Committee report, it 
was stated that the campaign expenditures in 1920 for each party 
were as follows: 


REPUBLICAN 

National Committee .$5,319,729 

Congressional Committee. 702,949 

State Committees. 2,078,060 


Total .$8,100,739 

DEMOCRATIC 

National Committee .$1,318,274 

Congressional Committee . 31,173 

State Committees . 888,323 


Total .$2,237,770 

Some of the larger individual contributions were: 

REPUBLICAN 

John D. Rockefeller. $25,000 

E. C. Converse. 25,000 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr. 15,000 

Jos. E. Widener. 10,750 






















NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


B. M. Baruch. 

A. A. Ryan. 

T. L. Chadbourne. 

T. F. Ryan.. 

H. A. Wroe. 


DEMOCRATIC 


$45,000 

45,000 

20,000 

10,000 

20,000 


The psychology The chief effort in most campaigns is to in- 
of the campaign fluence the minds of the voters everywhere by 
what may be called the “psychology of victory.” 
Much more energy seems to be expended upon convincing hesitant 
electors that a stupendous and sweeping victory is coming for one 
or the other party, than in presenting facts upon the issues of the 
campaign. One of the favorite methods of this kind is the “straw 
vote” which always seems to have a result pleasing to the news¬ 
paper or organization which conducts it. The multiplication of 
pictures of the candidate is intended to bring about the remark so 
often heard in a campaign, “I believe that Y is surely going to be 
elected. I see so many more pictures of him than of X.” News¬ 
papers vie with each other in telling of the conversion of life-long 
Republicans or Democrats to the Democratic or Republican ticket, 
there seeming to be more rejoicing at headquarters over one voter 
won from sin than over ninety and nine just persons who have not 
wavered in the faith. At frequent intervals the national chairmen 
issue glowing claims of certain signs of victory. Interviews with 
prominent men are printed indicating “unmistakable trends of opin¬ 
ion” or a “great popular sweep to X.” Badges, buttons, and other 
adornments are given away on the theory that one confessing 
partisan is worth many who keep their choice secret. The con¬ 
viction seems to be forced upon the observer that not education or 
conviction are sought, but rather the development of a crowd in¬ 
stinct, the ultimate end of which is the phenomenon of the plains, 
“a stampede.” 

“The vote once recorded, the role of the people is completed as 
well. The great assizes which the American people have just held 
in ‘their might and their majesty’ are at an end. Lord and sover¬ 
eign judge, they have appeared on the scene at the last moment 
only, having come from afar, as it were from a foreign land or 







52 PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 

from the opposite bank. A pontoon bridge is hurriedly constructed 
to bring together the general public and the community of ‘poli¬ 
ticians/ severed from one another in ordinary times. No sooner 
have they met than the politicians surround and turn the mass of 
electors by a series of concerted movements, and strive to conquer 
their minds and lead their wills captive. The efforts expended are 
formidable and the apparent results are admirable, but it is the 
triumph of organization applying factory methods to action on the 
public mind. Everything is engines, engineers, fuel, and materials; 
man plays a more or less subordinate part, as has been shown, for 
instance, by the position of the candidate. The latter hands over to 
the committee his money and his person, that is to say, his gift of 
the gab — if he has any; the committee shovels them into the 
furnace along with the money and the gift of the gab of the other 
candidates on the ‘ticket’ and of the ‘workers’ of every degree, 
so as to produce the highest possible pressure on the electoral 
material. In the endeavor to mould this material with the mini¬ 
mum of friction and resistance, all efforts are concentrated on its 
most malleable spots—the senses. The emotions of the multitude 
are appealed to; it is excited and worked up into a state of hys¬ 
teria by a set of elaborate methods complacently called an ‘educa¬ 
tional campaign’ down to the ‘Chinese business,’ which, according 
to a chairman of a State committee, ‘is politely styled “political 
education.” ’ The extreme nervous tension produced in the electors 
by the furious attacks on their minds—attacks which are all the 
more violent because they are crowded into a short space of time— 
is inevitably followed by a reaction. The artificial passion for the 
public weal at once gives way to civic weariness. Exhausted, the 
great mass of the electorate falls or relapses into a state of prostra¬ 
tion. The ‘politicians’ alone are left standing and masters of the 
field.” 1 


The Future of the Two Party System 

Students of government have come to recognize that there are 
forces and conditions in the United States which assure the per¬ 
manence of the two party system. Probably the most important 
factor in keeping any third party from gaining much power is the 
great size of the country. To maintain a party organization in such 
a great country as the United States with forty-eight separate state 


1 Ostrogorski, “Democracy,” Vol. II, pp. 365-366. 


NATIONAL PARTIES TODAY 


53 


units, is a task which so far only two parties at one time have been 
able to achieve. It should also be remembered that the division of 
powers in the national government have made great parties neces¬ 
sary, and requires of these great parties such powerful organization 
that we have never been able to have more than two important 
parties in national affairs. Probably another factor is the election 
of congressmen by districts. This practice, in nearly every case, 
works to the disadvantage of definite group interest and in favor of 
mere partisanship. It should be remembered that in France a great 
number of parties exist and find representation in the National As¬ 
sembly. These parties definitely stand for specific policies of gov¬ 
ernment and while there are many alliances among them, they have 
an individual vitality of political activity in the National Assembly. 
Whether the great size of the country means that we shall always 
have two great parties whose policy in general will be rather 
similar one to the other is a question which cannot be answered. 
History seems to indicate that it will continue as long as our 
methods of political activity are as they are now constituted. 


CHAPTER III 

LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


Local parties ^ip^HE preceding chapter indicated that the Na- 
basis of I tional Party organization (except during elec- 

national tion campaigns at four year periods) is little 

political life else than a national committee, with two or three 
headquarters, their staffs of workers, a great war 
chest contributed for the campaign, and a body of principles and 
policies adopted at the national convention. It is, in short, little 
more than a somewhat limited “overhead” organization. It has 
little of what might be called an organization in the local sub¬ 
divisions of the nation. For the actual work of appealing directly 
to the citizenship of the nation through other than newspaper and 
similar forms of mass appeal, the national party system depends 
upon local party organizations in states, cities, and towns. These 
local units have the ramifications of influence, the personal appeal 
to individual voters, and the constant and interested devotion so 
necessary to producing favorable results. These party units are 
at the service of the national organization whenever they are 
needed. They operate in state and local elections and maintain a 
constant, living connection with the electorate. They are, under 
such a strongly decentralized government as that of the United 
States, of the greatest importance to party life. They constitute, 
in fact, the foundation upon which our whole political structure 
rests. 


The primary interest of readers of this book is in the political 
phenomena of cities of major size. We shall, therefore, restrict 
ourselves to a discussion of politics as manifested in large urban 
centers although there is much in state and county political activity 
that merits attention. 


“Machine” While elaborate efforts have been made to dis¬ 
and tinguish between a “machine” and an “organiza- 

“Organization” tion”, the candid observer of political methods 

same thing finds difficulty in understanding that a difference 

exists at all. In reality the two words may be 
used interchangeably. They describe the same thing from two 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


55 


points of view. The politician calls his own “machine” an “or¬ 
ganization” and his opponent’s “organization” a “machine.” 

An organization or machine is personal in its nature. It is 
made up within a given area of the working members of a party 
who are loyal to the decisions of the constituted authorities and 
who further the interests of their party. The members of the or¬ 
ganization are bound together by common agreement for the pur¬ 
pose of promoting the general interest of the party. In the course 
of party development in the United States, the methods of con¬ 
structing a party organization have become more formal in nature, 
with more uniformity of organization in the various cities. In the 
beginning, all party machinery was wholly outside of the law 
(extra legal). But with the rise of undesirable features in party 
activity, laws were passed in the various states defining with more 
and more clearness, the methods which the parties must follow in 
determining their own organization. In Ohio, the forms of local 
party organization are fixed to a large degree by state statutes. 
Such activities as the use of money in campaigns are restricted 
closely, and infractions of a definite code of conduct provided with 
specific penalties. 

A “ring” is commonly understood to mean a small group intent 
upon some kind of political self-interest. Thus, a party organiza¬ 
tion is often dominated by a small group of persons forming an 
inner “ring.” Sometimes the ring includes some members of the 
organization with a few important outsiders who are not commonly 
known to be connected with the organization at all. Almost in¬ 
variably the term “ring” is used with a sinister connotation. It is 
usually synonymous with pure selfishness or corruption. For ex¬ 
ample, in Cincinnati, Boss Cox, with two or three lieutenants, 
dominated the machine and often reaped personal profits unknown 
to the other members of the machine. Often the “ring” includes 
such outsiders as newspaper publishers or editors or important 
attorneys who do not openly participate. 

Tammany The classic example of a local machine is the 

classic example famous Tammany organization of New York 
of machine City. The origin of this society antedates the 

American Revolution, although it came into 
being as a definitely organized society in 1789, two weeks after the 


56 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


inauguration of Washington. The founder was William Mooney, 
an ex-soldier who had served in the Revolution. The original pur¬ 
pose of the society, in the words of one of the founders, was to “fill 
the country with institutions designed, and men determined to 
preserve, the just balance of power.” This balance of power un¬ 
doubtedly meant the self-determination on the part of states. The 
society adopted Indian forms and usages, the officers held Indian 
titles, the head or president being styled the Grand Sachem while 
the members of the board of trustees were called Sachems. For 
a while the honorary title of Great Grand Sachem was conferred 
upon the President of the United States. From the beginning, the 
society was permeated with rather extreme democratic political 
doctrines. It sympathized passionately with the French Revolution 
and within a decade after its foundation became a staunch pro- 
Jefferson organization. In fact, it became so important as a po¬ 
litical factor, even within the administration of Washington, that 
President Washington rebuked certain “self-creative societies” be¬ 
cause “of an apprehension that their ultimate tendencies would be 
hostile to the public tranquility.” From 1798 to 1802, one of the 
most astute politicians that America has ever produced, Aaron 
Burr, was guiding the destinies of Tammany Hall. Burr never 
actually held the office of Grand Sachem but he controlled the 
society through his friends and proteges. Under Burr’s influence, 
the society became a frankly political organization. He brought 
about the chartering of the Manhattan Bank which was intended 
to strengthen the action of the political party in its opposition to 
the Federalists. The Jeffersonian triumph of 1800 was a great day 
in the history of Tammany, for Jefferson richly rewarded Tammany 
with political offices. 

A political The first quarter of the 19th century was marked 
power a by bitter warfare between Tammany and Dewitt 
century ago Clinton of the Jeffersonian Republican party but op¬ 
posed to Tammany. In Dewitt Clinton, Tammany 
found an opponent who could equal them at their own practices. 
He definitely used the offices of government which he, as Governor 
of New York, controlled, to fight the power of Tammany. For a 
while Tammany fared very badly in this struggle, but it soon re¬ 
covered power, and in the 20’s and 30’s, entrenched itself through 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


57 


advocacy of certain democratic principles which at that time were 
popular. From the beginning, the society had declared, among its 
objects, two special reforms—the securing of manhood suffrage and 
the abolition of the law for the imprisonment of debtors. Both of 
these measures, of course, were intended to add popularity to the 
society among the unpropertied classes. At that' time, of course, 
New York as well as other states, maintained a strict property 
qualification upon suffrage. This excluded, in the City of New 
York, vast numbers of poorer people who, with votes, would have 
been a great asset to Tammany. The democratic movement from 
1820 to 1840, resulted in the achievement of both of these purposes, 
and Tammany, by the year 1840, was thoroughly popular with the 
masses of the people. The three decades following 1840 were 
marked by the rise to power of Tweed and his friends. 

The Tammany machine is so closely centralized, that it can be 
said the history of Tammany Hall from 1850 to the present time is 
practically the story of the political operations of four great leaders, 
Tweed, Kelly, Croker, and Murphy. The first of these, William M. 
Tweed, rose from humble beginnings. In 1851, he came into 
prominence as a member of the board of aldermen. This body 
was so corrupt that it has lived in history under the name of the 
Forty Thieves. A short service of three years made him a rich 
man and, after a term in Congress, he returned to office in New 
York as a member of the Board of Supervisors. From this position, 
he acquired a strong control of the Tammany organization and, by 
1863, he and his friends were firmly entrenched in power. Closely 
associated with him were a number of men who, with Tweed, con¬ 
stituted the most famous ring in the history of American politics. 
Tweed was a hale and hearty “mixer,” his jovial manner winning 
the devotion of his party associates. Peter Sweeny was the 
schemer whose hand reached all of the elements of the underworld 
so necessary to the power of Tweed. A. Oakly Hall was a lawyer 
better educated than Tweed and Sweeny and able to give some 
respectability to the “ring.” A fourth member was “Slippery Dick” 
Connolly whose skill with figures was liberally drawn upon by the 
machine after it began the enrichment of its members, through 
graft. Albert Cardozo was a lawyer with great legal talents which 
were always given to the purpose of Tweed and his ring. 


58 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Plow Tweed The preoccupation of most people in the great 
ring worked issues of the Civil War gave this ring a splendid 

chance to control both the Tammany organization 
and the city government and, in 1865, they elected John T. Hoff¬ 
man, a tool of theirs, mayor of the city. Three years later, by dint 
of startling frauds both in naturalizing foreigners and in the man¬ 
agement of the election, Ploffman was elevated to the governorship 
while Hall was elected mayor. The year 1869 found the ring se¬ 
cure in power with Hoffman governor, Hall mayor, Sweeny in 
charge of the city treasury, Tweed president of the Board of Super¬ 
visors, Connolly comptroller and thus in charge of the finances of 
the city, while Cardozo was a judge of the city court with two 
servile associates beside him. The first interest of this aggregation 
of power was a reorganization of the city government. This was 
obediently granted by the state legislature. This reorganization 
centralized power in the hands of the mayor and resulted in placing 
Tweed, Sweeny, and Connolly absolutely in control of city affairs. 
The saturnalia of plunder that followed has few parallels in history. 
The rebuilding of the city was begun with a scheme for widening 
Broadway. Friends of the machine bought the necessary land and 
resold it to the city at a huge profit. Companies in which Tweed 
was interested received large contracts. In two years the sum of 
$3,000,000 was paid out for “city printing and stationery.” Old 
claims, three-fourths of which were fraudulent, were revived and 
paid. But the summit was reached in the erection of the Court 
House which was estimated, in 1868, to cost $250,000 and which, 
in 1871, was still unfinished and had cost from eight to thirteen 
millions. The bonded debt of the city rose from $36,293,000 in 
1869 to $97,287,000 in 1871. 

In 1871, when the machine seemed stronger than ever and was 
planning to elevate Hoffman to the Presidency and Cardozo to the 
United States Supreme Court, the evil deeds of the ring were sud¬ 
denly exposed and the ring fell from power, Tweed finally ending 
his days in jail. Samuel J. Tilden, a Democrat and subsequently a 
candidate for the presidency, played a leading part in the campaign 
against the ring. 

But Tammany soon “purified” itself and under the leadership 
of John Kelly regained its power. Kelly ruted until 1886 when he 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


59 


died, leaving a fortune of $500,000 as a result of ten years of power. 
His successor, Richard Croker, governed from 1886 to 1902 and 
then retired to an estate in Ireland. The most important event in 
Croker’s rule was the creation of Greater New York in 1897, thus 
greatly increasing the scope of Tammany’s power and influence. 
His mayor at this time, however, figured in sensational public 
utilities scandals. 

Tammany In 1902, Croker was succeeded by Charles F. 

still rules Murphy who still rules the organization. During 

New York City Murphy’s administration, Tammany has been out 
of control of the city for six years, during the 
years 1902-1904 and later from 1914-1918. In each of these in¬ 
stances a reform mayor had been elected on a wave of reform but 
by the following election Tammany was able to return to power. 
A most sensational incident took place in 1913 when Governor Wil¬ 
liam Sulzer, a Democrat, who was at war with Tammany, was by 
the power of Tammany impeached and removed from his office on 
charges. 

Tammany is perhaps the best organized political party in any 
American city. It has long been the model for ambitious political 
organizations in other cities, and fundamentally its method of ap¬ 
portioning power and responsibility is standard practice among 
local organizations. Hence a description of the manner in which 
it is organized and operates is quite necessary to an understanding 
of local politics. 

How The jurisdiction of Tammany Hall is, strictly 

Tammany speaking, confined to that part of New York City 

is organized which is legally known as New York County, includ¬ 
ing thirty and a half assembly districts, so called be¬ 
cause they are the basis of representation in the State Assembly. 
The counties of the Bronx and Kings have Democratic organiza¬ 
tions which are in sympathy with, if not under the control of Tam¬ 
many, while working arrangements are made with the other two 
Democratic county organizations. At the annual primary there is 
elected in each of the thirty and a half assembly districts, a District 
General Committee, which consists of about one member for every 


60 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


twenty-five voters. This District General Committee is the central 
governing body and constitutes the party organization within the 
assembly districts. It maintains headquarters within the district 
and conducts campaigns within the district in the interests of ap¬ 
proved candidates. One of the districts declares, in the rules of 
its committee, that the purpose of the organization is to “maintain 
and advance the ideals of Democracy and to inculcate in the voters 
and exact from all district representatives and officials the highest 
respect for those principles of civil and political honesty and public 
service which a true democracy assures.” 

District leaders Each district committee designates as many 
hold power officers as it sees fit. Thus the exact organization 

of the party within the district is not uniform 
throughout the city. Each district, however, has a chairman who 
is chairman of the campaign committee and of a number of stand¬ 
ing special committees. He is the nominal head of the district or¬ 
ganization. The real leader, however, is known as the executive 
member who represents the district in the executive committee of 
the county organization. This district leader is the real power in 
the district because he is the one who is looked to by the county 
organization in distributing patronage. The relative power of the 
chairman and of the district leader illustrates the importance of 
controlling patronage. While the chairman of the district com¬ 
mittee is the one actually placed at the head of the organization 
by the members within the district, the actual fact is that, on ac¬ 
count of the relations of the executive member with those who hold 
office in city and state, the rank and file of the party look to the 
executive member rather than to the chairman as leader. The 
members of the thirty assembly district committees together con¬ 
stitute the general or county committee of New York County. 
However, on account of the great size of this committee consisting 
of over 6,000 members, it is a committee in little more than name. 

Real power within the Tammany organization is exercised by 
the executive committee which is nominally a sub-commfttee of 
the general county committee. In order to promote centralization 
of control and continuity of policy, there is a rule that each member 
of this committee must be approved by the retiring committee. In 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


61 


this way the executive committee, once in power, may perpetuate 
its control. This executive committee, made up as it is of one 
member from each district, directs the internal affairs of the entire 
Tammany organization. It controls the finances of the county or¬ 
ganization, disburses its funds, agrees upon the distribution of city 
offices, and decides the policies of the Board of Aldermen and other 
branches of city administration. When Tammany has a Demo¬ 
cratic administration in power in New York City, the Tammany 
executive committee practically governs New York. No Tammany 
official can rise higher than membership in this committee. The 
Grand Sachem of the organization has become merely a nominal 
office. The present leader of the organization is Charles F. Murphy 
who occupies no position in party organization other than that of 
executive member of the Twelfth Assembly District. It is an in¬ 
teresting fact that leadership in Tammany Hall is a power which 
is maintained only by the sheer ability of the incumbent himself. 
He is not held in office by any privilege. He has no legal power 
over other members of the committee and yet the history of the 
organization indicates that he can be deposed only with the most 
extreme difficulty. In fact, he generally holds office throughout 
his life. 

The captain The thirty and a half assembly districts in New 

makes contact York City are sub-divided into election districts 
with voters or precincts, each containing about four hundred 

voters. For every election district the chairman 
of the District'General Committee appoints a captain. This captain 
is the official representative of the party in his election district and 
is directly responsible to the District General Committee. “He is re¬ 
quired personally to acquaint himself with the political affiliations 
and tendencies of all voters within his election district, and a list 
of them he must carefully compile and revise before every primary 
or general election, reporting to the general committee of the dis¬ 
trict the names of all voters removing from or establishing resi¬ 
dences within the election district. He is made responsible to the 
District General Committee and the district leader for the mainte¬ 
nance of the party vote in his district. He officially represents the 
party at the polls on registration and election days and appoints 


62 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


watchers and challengers and party workers to assist him in bring¬ 
ing out the party registration and vote. He likewise recommends 
to the chairman suitable voters to serve as election officers.” 1 

Thus the party organization of New York City may be likened 
to an army, the general staff of which is the county executive com¬ 
mittee, the division commander of each district being the district 
leader with his staff of assistants and each group of four hundred 
voters is commanded by a captain. 

The Cox For many years Cincinnati was dominated by one 

machine in of the most powerful machines ever developed in an 
Cincinnati American city. The name of this machine has be¬ 
come associated very definitely with the man who 
dominated it for nearly twenty years, George B. Cox. The per¬ 
sonality of Cox himself we shall describe later. His machine illus¬ 
trates what was possible in a fairly typical American city. 

At the head of the machine was Cox who, in the later and more 
prosperous days of his rule, held no political office at all but con¬ 
ducted his political affairs from his office as President of the Cin¬ 
cinnati Trust Company and his little room over the Mecca Saloon. 
The machine operated both the city and county governments. 

Penrose The hierarchy of power in a state where there is 

supreme in close articulation of action between cities and state 
Pennsylvania government is well described in the following edi¬ 
torial comments from the Philadelphia Public Led¬ 
ger of Jan. 10, 1915 : 2 

• • • Picture a pyramid. The apex is Senator Boies 

Penrose. His throne, inscribed with ‘The Divine Right of Bosses,’ 
rests upon McNichol and Vare. Under McNichol and Vare are 
contractors, dual office-holders, and hand-fed leaders. These rest 
for their influence and immunity upon scores of lesser bosses, 
bosslets, and boss-barnacles apportioned to the various communities 

1 Beard, “American Government and Politics,” p. 662. 

2 “For an admirable picture in fiction of a boss-ridden legislature, see Winston 
Churchill’s novel, ‘Coniston.’ For many years the State boss of Rhode Island occupied an 
office in the State Capitol during sessions of the legislature. In Missouri at one time the 
boss used to sit behind a curtain back of the speaker’s chair and from there send in his 
orders or amendments to bills.”—Ray, “Political Parties,” page 460. 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


63 


of the Commonwealth. Beneath these are the wholesale and retail 
liquor interests, rich, astute, unscrupulous, and levying tribute upon 
themselves and disreputable dependents to fill the coffers of the 
dynasty above them. The next layer of the pyramid is made up of 
solid business men, holding their breath and shutting their nostrils, 
but all the while patiently bearing all, ignoring all, extenuating all 
because Penrose, the reputed tariff mogul, is thought to sway the 
protection sceptre that permits them to draw dividends and divide 
profits. And then, under everything and carrying the weight of all, 
are the great, dear, sincere, unsophisticated but duped, God-fear¬ 
ing citizens who have thought so much of the raptures of the next 
world that they have not surmised the rottenness of this. 

“For some time Boies Penrose has ruled Pennsylvania as abso¬ 
lutely as the Sultan of Sulu ruled his distant domain and with 
about the same tender regard for the interests of his subjects. It 
is several generations since the people of Pennsylvania have known 
independence except as a Fourth of July tradition. Governor-elect 
Brumbaugh has made the amazing discovery that the rights and 
privileges of citizenship in this Commonwealth are not the private 
perquisites of Penrose. Men who have known Harrisburg in recent 
decades have spoken of the members of the legislature as pawns, 
which is an insult to the pawn, because a pawn can take a bishop, 
a knight or a castle, and can put a king in check; they have been 
puppets, automatically obedient to the will of the Sultan of Sulu. 
There have been periods when the legislature has had to mark time 
and the governor look sublime in enforced idleness until McNichol 
could discover the wish and will of his sovereign overlord in 
Washington.” 

Party The present organization of the two major 

organizations parties in Cleveland is in large measure determined 
in Cleveland by state statutes. At the primary elections held in 
August in the even numbered years there is elected, 
in each of the 1009 precincts of Cuyahoga County, a Democratic 
and a Republican “Central Committeeman.” These Committeemen 
make up the County Central Committee of each party. A short 
time after the election of this Committee, a meeting is held at which 
an Executive Committee is chosen and delegated with full power 
to administer the affairs of the party. The County Central Com¬ 
mittee, a large cumbersome body, in actual practice lives only until 


64 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


this one meeting. It then gives its power to an 1 Executive Com¬ 
mittee and then passes into “suspended animation” for the re¬ 
mainder of its term of office. The law provides that this County 
Central Committee may determine whether its members shall be 
elected according to precincts or by wards and townships. Both 
parties have chosen the precinct basis, probably because the size 
of the Committee is thus greatly increased, and can be more easily 
directed by the small group of party managers at the top. From 
this point there are certain important differences between the 
Democratic and Republican organizations. In each party there is 
a sub-committee of the Executive Committee which is concerned 
solely with city affairs. This sub-committee is made up of those 
members of the County Executive Committee who live in the city. 
In the Democratic party the same person serves as chairman of 
both city and county committees. In the Republican organization 
the City and County Chairmen are distinct. 

The Democratic County Executive Committee is made up of 
about thirty members. Its officers are a chairman, vice chairman, 
treasurer, and secretary. The secretary is a full-time, salaried 
executive. The more important duties of the Executive Committee 
are the endorsement of candidates for elective and appointive posi¬ 
tions in the government, and the management of campaigns. Below 
the Executive Committee are the ward leaders. A ward leader is 
chosen by the precinct captains of his ward acting jointly with the 
Executive Committee. Thus there is maintained a degree of self 
determination within the ward with a veto from above when it 
seems necessary. Precinct captains are chosen by the Executive 
Committee. There is throughout the Democratic organization a 
strong tendency to centralized authority. 

The Republican Organization of Cuyahoga County is some¬ 
what more Jeffersonian in its operation than the Democratic. Ward 
leaders are chosen by the precinct captains who are, in fact, 
the Precinct Committeemen elected at the polls. This distinction 
should be noted. The Democratic Executive Committee retains 
power by appointing precinct captains of their own choosing. In 
many cases these are the same persons as the central committee¬ 
men, but this is not necessarily true, for the Executive Committee 
desires, for the efficiency of its operation, a loyal staff of workers 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


65 


in every precinct and ward. The Republican method of choosing 
ward and precinct workers is looser and often permits of serious 
instances of action by local workers independent of the Executive 
Committee. 

Importance of The two party organizations in Ohio pay very 
the Board of strict attention to the Board of Elections. This 
Elections organization includes a bi-partisan board at head¬ 

quarters with a staff of workers and, of course, a 
group of election judges and clerks in every precinct at elections 
and primaries. The two political organizations work closely with 
this election board. In most cases, the party nominates all of the 
staff of the Board including precinct clerks and judges. The great 
value of the election machinery thus manned to the regular party 
organization is self-evident. 

The qualities Like every other institution, the machine in the 
of a boss last analysis depends upon the persons who are the 

dominating forces in it. The machine in America 
has produced a group of very interesting and significant leaders. 
The type needed for these organizations is a different sort of leader 
from any the world has ever seen before. Almost without excep¬ 
tion, the Boss is a person who has come from the lowest rank in 
the economic order of society. He has, in general, come up through 
the various grades in political preferment to the position from 
which he can dominate the entire city. He holds his position not 
by virtue of vested privilege, the right of birth, or any other of the 
influences that have kept leaders in office in past generations, but 
he maintains his power from day to day by sheer ability to control 
his subordinates. In this respect, he is like the king in some 
primitive societies who maintained his rule because he was the 
strongest and fiercest of all the warriors. The Boss seldom be¬ 
comes a candidate for elective office. He works as quietly as he 
can, giving the more spectacular activities into the hands of in¬ 
dividuals whose blameless personal life or great ability as orators 
or public leaders gives them more standing with the public. 

Perhaps the best modern example of a political boss is the 
present leader of Tammany Hall, Charles F. Murphy. “Charley” 


66 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Murphy was born in New York City, worked as a youth in an 
East-side shipyard, and acquired his schooling in the rough sur¬ 
roundings of his work. In a district noted for the rough character 
of its denizens, Murphy, because of his physical prowess and quick 
wits, maintained leadership. Tradition has it that, when a very 
young man, he became the leader of a sort of junior Tammany 
Hall known as the Sylvan Social Club, composed of boys fifteen to 
twenty years of age. He later became a driver on a horse-car line. 
He was a manly youth who from a very early age assumed the 
responsibility of supporting his family. At the same time he was 
able to save enough money to start himself in the saloon business. 

The education In 1879, he bought a small saloon and four years 
of “Charley” later a larger and better one. He became a very 

Murphy useful Tammany worker in his district and, by 

1890, he was the owner of four prosperous saloons. 
In 1892, he was chosen Tammany leader of his district, a position 
which he has held ever since. In his district he has always been 
credited with a generous disposition, and many stories are told of 
his charities. On one occasion in particular, he gave four thousand 
dollars to relieve the distress of the poor in a great emergency. Mr. 
Murphy was thoughtful of his relatives also, one of his brothers 
being on the police force and two others achieving the office of 
alderman. Under the Van Wyck administration, Murphy was ap¬ 
pointed a dock commissioner, at which time he gave up his saloons 
to a brother and three old friends. He made many business con¬ 
nections with organizations which seemed to be engaged in very 
profitable enterprises. By 1902, Murphy began to show evidences 
of some degree of wealth. 

Mr. Murphy is very diffident, this characteristic having earned 
for him the name of Silent Charley. He has none of the ordinary 
vices. In spite of his four saloons, he was always extremely tem¬ 
perate and was never known to gamble at cards. 

The diligence Another political boss, George B. Cox, is thus 
of “Boss” Cox described by a keen and reliable observer. “Cox is 
now fifty-one years old, in weight about two hun¬ 
dred and twenty-five pounds; iron gray hair and mustache; a man 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


67 


of good appearance with the exception of an eye that does not in¬ 
spire confidence. He talks little, expressing himself only when he 
has made up his mind; he has a sepulchral voice, unmodulated by 
sympathy; a sphinx to a newspaper reporter. With few exceptions, 
he will be found during the evening at Wielert’s saloon in com¬ 
pany with some intimate friends. Here he meets his workers and 
talks over situations. Though he has a palatial home in Clifton, 
lights seldom appear in its windows, indicating that home life is 
not one of his enjoyments. Nine o’clock each morning finds him 
in his office at the Cincinnati Trust Company, of which he is presi¬ 
dent. In the afternoon, he occupies his political office over the 
Mecca saloon. Here he receives applicants for jobs, adjusts diffi¬ 
culties, and plans with his lieutenants. He seldom leaves the city, 
knowing well, especially in his line, that ‘eternal vigilance is the 
price of success/ It is absolutely necessary that every part of his 
machine should be kept constantly conscious of the fact that he is 
the all-powerful one, and the fate of each depends upon his good 
will. Should any considerable number of job holders conceive the 
idea that their welfare depended upon some lieutenant other than 
Cox, this subordinate officer might gradually acquire too much 
power and be a threatening force.” 1 


Sources of Machine Power 

Jobs first In determining the importance of the so-called 
element of “spoils” system in local party activities, the fact should 
power be brought to mind that in a grea,t city, reaching the 

voters personally, influencing their opinions on public 
questions, “getting out the vote” and performing all of the in¬ 
numerable duties necessary to effective political activity, means 
the absolute need of large numbers of interested and faithful and 
energetic workers. The political army, no matter how capable 
the men at the head, is no stronger than its privates. These pri¬ 
vates must be widely scattered throughout the wards and precincts, 
they must be men of the plain people, they must have abundant 
leisure for political work and above all, they must be driven to 
their work by a definite, eternally-present motive for hard work. 


l Wright, “Bossism in Cincinnati.' 


68 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


In our American party system these privates are overwhelmingly 
the holders of positions in the government service, their leisure 
comes from the fact that they are encouraged and expected to give 
of their time to party service, and the motive behind them which 
inexorably drives them to their party duties is the desire to keep 
their means of livelihood. The use of governmental positions to 
support party workers is the keystone of the American system of 
government by parties. In discussing it here, we shall not examine 
the underlying causes for it nor shall we praise or blame the prac¬ 
tice. We shall merely point out how it operates. 

How boss used The rise of George B. Cox to supreme power is 
patronage an excellent example of the importance of control 

over jobs, in securing and holding political power. 
Places were carefully distributed to workers in the various wards, 
and, in a year or two, Cox was securely in a position of power 
which he held for nearly twenty years. The relation of distributing 
patronage to political power in the Cox machine is well described 
in the following statement: 

“Cox’s power, as that of any boss, depends absolutely upon his 
power of disposing of jobs. It is an unqualified condition, im¬ 
pressed upon all heads of departments and office-holders, that all 
subordinate help shall be appointed by him. A judge cannot select 
his own bailiff or stenographer. The mayor cannot choose his 
assistant or clerks. This, of course, in many instances, is humiliat¬ 
ing to the dignified incumbent, but he understands the system before 
he takes office, so meekly submits. 

“By thus demanding the appointment of every person paid 
from the city or county treasury, Cox has about five thousand job 
holders directly dependent upon him; each and every one realizing 
that Cox is in position to say ‘come, and he cometh; go, and he 
goeth.’ These five thousand men have on an average, at least five 
friends whose votes they are supposed to control through friend¬ 
ship. Not infrequently, the job holder appeals to these friends for 
their vote on the ground that his job depends upon his being able 
to influence so many votes, and surely they would not see him lose 
his position and thus cause his family to suffer. Great emphasis is 
laid upon the necessity of each job holder delivering a certain 
number of votes. Recently, a young man who was chafing because 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


69 


he was compelled to vote the Cox ticket, made the explanation of his 
bonds by saying, ‘My father is janitor of one of the public school 
buildings. They demand of him that he control my vote and those 
of two other young men who board with us. We are carefully 
watched when we go to the polls. If we stay in the booth too long, 
we are called to task for it when we come out.’ In this way 
Cox controls, with certainty, approximately twenty-five thousand 
votes.” 1 

In the Cox regime the twenty-four ward leaders, with only one 
exception, held political positions which, of course, permitted their 
free political activity : 2 

Ward 

1. John Breen — Member City 

Council. 

2. Daniel W. Brown — Assistant 

U. S. Postmaster. 

3. G. W. Tibbies — Justice of 

Peace. 

4. Vivian J. Fagin — U. S. Mar¬ 

shal. 

5. William E. Kennedy—City In¬ 

spector of Engines for Ohio. 

6. R. K. Hynicka—County Treas¬ 

urer. 

7. Fred Bader—County Recorder. 

8. Michael Mullen—Member City 

Council. 

9. Wm. PI. Leuders—Judge of Po¬ 

lice Court. 

10. August Herrmann — President 

New Water Works Commis¬ 
sion. 

11. Fred Driehs—Deputy County 

Clerk’s Office. 

12. Frank S. Krug—Civil Engin¬ 

eer under County Commis¬ 
sioners. 

1 Wright, “Bossism in Cincinnati,” pages 62-63. 

2 Ibid, page 70. 


Ward 

13. Jos. A. Brown—Superintend¬ 

ent of Markets. 

14. Fred Maag — Superintendent 

Street Cleaning Department. 

15. Wm. Scheibel—Custodian City 

Hall'. 

16. Dan Everson — Engineer for 

Court House. 

17. August Kirbert—Clerk Police 

Court. 

18. Louis Kraft—Gambling House 

Privileges. 

19. Edw. Bartsche—Assistant City 

Sealer. 

20. Geo. F. Holmes — Clerk of 

Board of Public Service. 

21. Jos. Keenan—Member of City 

Council. 

22. Henry W. Haman—Member of 

City Council. 

23. Louis Scheuler — Member of 

City Council. 

24. Fred Sperber—Member of City 

Council. 


70 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Informing parallels to this list could be made in any American 
city with due regard, of course, to the fact that one of the two 
parties is frequently so far out of power that many of its workers 
are for the time being out of jobs. But in such a condition the 
other party is, of course, fully supplied. The one machine is held 
together by potential and the other by actual jobs. 

Special A political machine, entrenched in positions of 

privilege power in the government, has an infinite variety 

another source of privileges which it can give to those whom it 
of power desires to favor. This power is used not only to 

enrich and assist its own membership, but to 
make “friends” for the organization of countless citizens who are 
thus benefited. It is almost axiomatic in America that thq right 
“pull” will accomplish any result. Properly manipulated it will 
yield public service franchises worth millions, the enhancement 
of real property values by conveniently placed public improve¬ 
ments, freedom from arrest, excuse from jury service, special treat¬ 
ment in prison or more frequently a pardon or parole, exemption 
from prosecution in serious crimes, continuances of cases in court 
or other favors within the jurisdiction of courts and the officers 
thereof. 

Probably the most serious source of municipal corruption in 
America has been the public service corporation. Telephone, gas, 
electric and traction companies necessarily enjoy monopolistic holds 
upon service, and therefore they have practically everywhere been 
compelled to operate only upon a governmental grant or franchise. 
The securing of these legal grants has brought together the weakest 
element in a democratic government and the most subtle and 
powerful temptations. In former years, the members of legislative 
bodies who were needed were usually influenced by outright bribery 
in which money was directly given to the legislator in return for 
support of the grant in question. A generation of reform has 
brought about a great change in the method and quantity of such 
influence. It is still not beyond possibility to bring economic forces 
to bear upon an individual legislator. Instead of the crudity of an 
outright gift of money, he may be allowed to purchase stock. He 
may be permitted to borrow money for his private affairs, he may 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


71 


receive real estate “opportunities.” A thousand avenues can be 
found to reach and influence an individual outside the one legiti¬ 
mate avenue of honest argument. 

Politics in The use of the influence held by the machine in 

justice system the processes for the administration of justice is 
one of the most familiar types of questionable po¬ 
litical methods. This may take a great number of forms of which 
the following are the most familiar: 

a. Actual collusion between officers and members of 
the police force and the management of saloons, houses of 
prostitution, and gambling. One of the most sensational ex¬ 
amples of this vicious practice was the famous Rosenthal 
case in New York City. At the trial of Police Lieutenant 
Charles Becker and four “gunmen,” it was shown that 
Becker as the head of a police “raiding squad” had carried 
on a regular business of collecting tribute from gambling 
houses which he exempted from molestation by the police. 
After protecting the gambling house of Rosenthal for a long 
time, a quarrel developed and Rosenthal published an affi¬ 
davit in the New York World swearing that Becker had been 
his partner in : his unlawful business. Two days after, ap¬ 
parently with the aid of the police, Rosenthal was shot to 
death at Broadway and Forty-third Street. For this crime 
Charles S. Whitman, then District Attorney, succeeded in 
convicting Becker and four gunmen. 

b. The activities of the professional bondsman consti¬ 
tute another phase of the relation between the “machine” 
and the administration of justice. The professional bonds¬ 
man, usually with a very limited amount of property, signs 
bonds for scores of persons caught in the meshes of the law. 
The person for whom the bond is given is naturally grateful 
to his bondsman. This gratitude constitutes a political asset 
to the bondsman himself who thus becomes a power in poli¬ 
tics. This power is often used in getting favors from officers 
in the administration of justice. These favors can then be 
used to! buy more gratitude from law breakers and so the 
practice operates in a vicious circle. 


72 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


c. So much depends upon the prosecutor in the admin¬ 
istration of justice that enormous pressure is always exerted 
upon his office to temper the course of justice in return for 
political preferment. “Nolleing” cases is largely a function 
of the prosecutor so that by securing his co-operation the 
offender may, except in very important cases, rest reasonably 
assured of escaping trial. 

d. The practice of suspending sentences and of miti¬ 
gating punishments gives great power to the judge. Fre¬ 
quently, for political reasons, the judge will assess a very 
heavy sentence and thus secure the public approval of those 
who favor heavy punishments, and later suspend the sen¬ 
tence to the great satisfaction and approval of the defendant, 
thus receiving approval from both sides of the transaction. 

e. The pardoning power given to the governor of a 
state often lends itself to grave abuse. Attorneys who are 
actually or merely alleged to be “close to the governor” may, 
if they so desire, secure a very profitable clientele from 
among the friends and relatives of prisoners in state institu¬ 
tions. In fact, such an attorney may not actually have influ¬ 
ence with the governor at all but his known friendship 
secures the business nevertheless. Pardons are given con¬ 
stantly and success in securing one, even though political 
influence had nothing to do with it, is a great asset to the 
attorney who had charge of the preparation of the case for 
the proper authorities. Such attorneys may in turn be used 
by this machine for activity during campaigns. 

These constitute only a few typical ways in which special 
privileges may be traded for political support. The ramifications 
of city governmental agencies, touching every citizen in a score of 
his every-day relations, give an opportunity for the political ma¬ 
chine in power to win the support of voters everywhere by the dis¬ 
tribution of countless favors, exemptions, and privileges. And the 
all too universal human trait which seeks unfair advantage gives 
an incentive to the politician to ply his custom with tireless energy. 
This custom goes so far as to give credence to a tradition in many 
states that a small number on an automobile is a sort of luck token, 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


73 


the theory being that a policeman will hesitate to compel the owner 
to obey the law because he will feel that the low number denotes 
a political “pull” with the state administration. 

Opposing One of the most familiar forms of degraded po- 

machines often litical life is that in which a secret understanding 
work together exists between the leaders of the two contending 
party machines which permits a division of spoils 
and a continuous life to both. There are many factors in machine 
life which make this a desirable arrangement to machine politicians. 
The periods during which a city machine is out of power are ex¬ 
ceedingly costly to the integrity of its organization. The incon¬ 
venience of being without a job drives many workers into other 
occupations; the absence of favors carries countless minor party 
workers to the other party; while everywhere party morale ebbs. 
A ten year period “out in the cold” will all but kill an organization 
in a city. 

To eliminate these periods of political destitution, an arrange¬ 
ment between machines is often made to allow favors to go to 
each party. Where two political sub-divisions exist in the same area 
(as a city and county), such an arrangement can easily be made, 
each party taking a set of officers with only a half hearted opposi¬ 
tion maintained by each. Frequently, a state or national candidate 
is “traded” for some other candidate. The latter is accomplished 
by such an agreement as the following. Y is a Democratic candidate 
for President, X is a Republican candidate for Governor. The word 
may be quietly given by Democratic machine workers to work only 
moderately, or not at all, for Y, while the Republican machine may 
send out the same instructions regarding X. In this way, Y may 
lose the city while his running mate, the candidate for governor, 
will win. This type of political treachery has often been charged 
to the Tammany machine in New York. It may be accomplished 
so adroitly that it will scarcely appear on the surface at all. In 
fact it is sometimes so directly dictated by the logic of circum¬ 
stances that instructions are not necessary. 

However, in fairness it must be said that experienced political 
students believe that charges of such arrangements are more fre- 


74 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


quent than is actually the case. Election returns bring about cer¬ 
tain peculiar results that look suspicious but are actually the result 
of a bona fide action of popular will. Charges of collusion are easy 
to make and hard to refute. It cannot be expected that opposing 
party leaders will maintain, throughout a lifetime of campaigns, a 
righteous hatred of each other. They gravitate in the course of 
time into the position of opposing attorneys in a law suit, “profes¬ 
sionally hostile but personally friendly.” But, in spite of these cir¬ 
cumstances, that such collusion has been a more or less frequent 
factor in party life in America cannot be denied in the light of 
numerous illuminating revelations which have in some instances 
come into public view. 


Big business That party life has been liberally nourished by 

sometimes private business needs little demonstration to 

corrupts politics Americans. We have passed through a genera¬ 
tion marked by many revelations of the corrup¬ 
tion wrought by the intermingling of business with politics. For 
many years, Philadelphia was ruled by a ring which derived its 
chief power from the money of a gas corporation; Tammany has 
profited from every type of public utility corporation that has ever 
operated in New York; while the Cox machine grew rich from 
tribute collected from corporations in Cincinnati. 


Finally, there must be considered that a machine’s power, after 
all, is only partially secured through illegitimate sources. Re¬ 
formers often unwisely and untruthfully seek to picture political 
machines and bosses as wholly selfish aggregations of dishonest 
men. To do this is to assume that the mass of voters, who hand 
over to the machine the power of governing a city, are either 
grossly ignorant or meekly submissive. The assumption of a ma¬ 
chine as wholly evil and selfish is to slander the human nature of 
Politicians the public that keeps the machine in power. The 

know human machine is a social force dominated by men who 
nature * know fuli wel1 the human nature with which they 
deal. The Tammany leader, in most cases, deals 
with people who have no property, and hence are not greatly wor¬ 
ried about how the taxes are spent, and who have pressing and im¬ 
mediate problems of making a living and raising a family, which 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


75 


have much more of urgency and reality than any far-off vision of 
civic good. Their interest is more in their wage rate than in the 
development of honesty in public office. They support the men 
whom they know and can understand. They give their votes to 
those who speak their own language, who have suffered and thus 
understand their own trials, who share their simple recreations, and 
contribute to their scanty comforts. The relation of this fact to 
“reform policies” is well described in the following statement: 

“The ability to place reform administrations in power, and, 
above all, the ability to keep them there, depends, fundamentally, 
upon the ability to control or command votes, and so to administer 
or to remodel, when necessary, the governmental machinery that it 
shall minister to genuine social needs. In the great cities it is the 
poorer, ignorant classes who, by reason of their solidarity and 
numerical voting strength, hold the balance of power. A reform 
administration cannot, under present conditions, hope to remain 
long in power unless it can gain the support of this large class of 
citizens. It is to this class that the ward boss ministers in a very 
direct way, and ministers not spasmodically, but continually. He 
is able to do this because he lives in close touch with his people, 
understands them, knows their needs, and is able to obtain money 
in devious ways with which to assist them. They keep him in 
power because he is the embodiment of their ideal of goodness. 
When they have been in distress of any kind he has succored them; 
when the rent has fallen due and eviction has stared them in the 
face, his hand alone has saved them; when they have been out of 
work, he has found them jobs; when sickness befell them, he has 
sent a physician to heal; when the abhorred pauper burial seemed 
inevitable, he has provided a respectable funeral. They know that 
in the scorching days of summer his beneficence has provided free 
excursions to the cool countryside; that his bounty insures each 
Thanksgiving and Christmas season the free distribution of turkeys 
and ducks, unmarred by any calculating limitations of one to a 
family; that when the hearth-fire has burned low in winter his 
charity has provided fuel and clothing. 

“When municipal reformers are willing to humble themselves, 
lay aside their holier-than-thou spirit, and study the methods of the 
ward boss, learn to minister as he ministers, and then set them¬ 
selves not merely to recasting the governmental machinery, but 
also to the creation of pure, efficient, and vital human institutions, 


76 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


to do the philanthropic work which the ward bosses do, then, and 
not till then, it is to be feared, will permanent success be achieved. 
Until now the children of darkness have been wiser in their day 
and generation “than the children of light, and the latter may well 
ponder the lessons to be drawn from careers of some of our famous 
ward or district bosses of the type of ‘Little Tim’ Sullivan .” 1 

Foreign voters One factor, most commonly used to explain 
not to blame the corruption of politics in some cities, is the 
familiar statement about a “mass of ignorant 
foreigners/’ This charge has been frequently made and never 
proved. It could be shown that Chicago’s municipal government 
has been much better than that of St. Louis, a city of a much 
higher percentage of American stock, but a lower rate of civic pride 
and honesty. And no corruption that America has seen could 
exceed that disclosed a few years ago in rural Adams County, Ohio, 
a county with an almost pure American-born citizenry. The fact 
is that the standards maintained for fifteen years by the courts and 
the United States Bureau of Naturalization have meant the restric¬ 
tion of naturalization to a type of intelligence higher than the 
average who have always held the ballot. The American who 
seeks to place upon the “foreigner” the blame for civic corruption 
has not yet proved his case. 

It is true, however, that in certain sections of great cities, 
masses of manageable men are found. These are the people of the 
underworld intent only upon freedom from law enforcement, the 
derelicts who haunt the cheap hotels and lodging houses of the 
downtown wards, the casual workers who drift from town to towm 
and in dull times are found with the derelicts—all of them are 
easily made the assets of unsavory machine politicians. 

“Best” people Another more justifiable charge is the apathy 
neglect civic of the so-called “best people” and their failure to 
affairs respond to their civic responsibilities. Undoubtedly 

it is true that to most people civic duties rank 
fourth or fifth among life interests. The responsibilities of earn¬ 
ing a living and caring for a family become so absorbing to most 

l Ray, “Political Parties,” pp. 320-322. 


LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 


77 


citizens that little time is given to public affairs. “Politics.” is 
something unpleasant to be left to unpleasant people called “poli¬ 
ticians.” Many of these neglectful citizens, when a governmental 
concern touches their private business or personal interest, con¬ 
tribute to the general degradation of civic life by seeking special 
privileges or immunities. Numbered among these are the people 
who condemn much less the giver than the taker of a bribe, and 
whose standards in business life, if applied to politics, would be 
infinitely worse than the politicians they condemn. Aristotle made 
a sharp distinction between the “good man” and the “good citizen.” 
Many “good men” who are keenly devoted to family and home, are, 
in fact, very low in civic morality. These bad citizens are part of 
the condition that has made so many failures for democracy. The 
“best” people have evidently not changed much in two thousand 
years, for Plato said very aptly that the penalty people pay for not 
being interested in politics is to be governed by people worse than 
themselves. 

Tradition A constant factor which machine politicians may 
rules most always reckon upon is the power of tradition in most 
people voters. If we were able to determine with mathe¬ 

matical precision the elements entering into a voter’s 
decision at an election we would probably find that more than sev¬ 
enty-five per cent is sheer habit. A professor of political science at 
Harvard states that, after an examination of thousands of students 
in his classes over a period of several years, he found that over 
three-fourths intended to vote as their fathers did. If this is true of 
men early in life when the spirit of innovation is strongest, it can 
easily be seen how largely habit will determine the decisions of their 
later years. Certain wards are always reckoned as safely Demo¬ 
cratic or safely Republican and are, upon that basis, entered into 
the general machine plans. The politicians do not need to attract 
this element by nominating good candidates. They feel sure of sup¬ 
port on party lines even for the poorest offerings. And the extent 
to which politicians will make their candidates attractive varies 
inversely with the amount of habitual partisanship within the elec¬ 
torate. Philadelphia and New York, always safely Republican and 
Democratic, are not given by the dominant parties as good candi¬ 
dates as cities in which the balance is more nearly maintained. 


78 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


Long ballot The long ballot has always worked to the advan- 
helps tage of machine rule. A great many elective offices 

machine means that the voter must divide his attention 

among so many candidates that he is unable to give 
any one sufficient study to reach an intelligent decision. Con¬ 
fronted by a mass of names he usually yields to his partisanship, 
and votes straight. Just as habitual party regularity is an asset 
to machine politics, so is the enforced regularity caused by a long 
and complicated ballot. 

Another factor which contributes to the low tone of municipal 
politics is the unattractive character of public life. The capable, 
ambitious man who enters politics and runs for public office must 
resign himself to a very considerable personal sacrifice. The Gov¬ 
ernment pays its public officials very inadequate salaries, the term 
of office is short and the tenure very uncertain. Another important 
fact is a prevailing prejudice against “politics,” which keeps many 
people from becoming actively interested. A man who is “in 
politics” even without seeking public office is often discredited in 
the eyes of his employer. Hundreds of people who are in social 
work of one kind or another and have the qualifications necessary 
for real service in politics are kept out because of the notion that 
they should not “mix in politics.” One of the first steps in the 
process of emancipation is to get into the minds of good Americans 
the idea that participation in political life is not only respectable 
but the fulfillment of a patriotic duty. 


CHAPTER IV 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 

The solemn rT^HE American people were called to arms in 
referendum I 1917, not to defend mere nationalistic aspira- 

of 1917 tion nor to repel an invader. They were sum¬ 

moned to defend the principle of democracy against 
a deadly enemy. And their response, with the echoing assent of 
the plain people in every other allied country, constituted, in fact, 
the most momentous popular decision that the world has ever 
known. Blood and treasure were voted in order that a form of 
human association should not perish from the earth. The issue 
was clearly stated when we entered the war, and every scrap of 
propaganda intended to sustain the morale of the English-speaking 
race was the message of democracy. That decision has placed 
democracy beyond the stage of a timid experiment. It has been 
chosen as a form of human government by the plain people of the 
world. It must be accepted with its responsibilities and short¬ 
comings. The question of its superiority over other'forms of gov¬ 
ernment may, of course, be the subject of academic discussion, but 
the social engineer must base his constructive thinking upon the 
fact that democracy is to be the government of civilized people for 
a long time to come, and he must make his processes conform to 
the democratic principle. 

This principle can be very simply stated. It means that there 
shall be no legal distinction between one man and another. In 
the exercise of political power they shall participate on equal terms. 
And the purpose of human government shall be to bring from all 
classes, high and low, the best talent that exists in every one. If 
special privilege stands in the way of this, it must be eliminated, 
and if the elevation of one or of a few lessens the opportunities of 
others, all must be leveled. This is no soft doctrine that can be 
modified when it hurts someone. It is as inexorable as the very 
processes of nature. It is the religion of a race of strong men. 

The century and a half during which the United States has 
been an independent democracy, has witnessed many shortcomings 


80 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


in the-processes of popular rule. No friend of democracy can deny 
the validity of these instances of weakness. We have seen that, 
while old forms of privilege are dead, the instincts which sustained 
them still persist. The strong still seek to exploit the weak and 
to make their exploitation permanent. New names are coined for 
old repudiated distinctions, and new and specious reasons are al¬ 
ways being sought for old forms of wrongdoing. 

But the battle for the substance as well as the name of democ¬ 
racy has not flagged. When new shortcomings in our still im¬ 
perfect instruments of government have been revealed, there have 
always been a few who, in spite of the counter attacks of the enemy 
and the lethargy of the majority, have carried on the effort to 
fortify the weaknesses and correct the imperfections of the democ¬ 
racy. It is the purpose of this chapter to indicate some of the 
shortcomings of democracy, to tell of the efforts that have been 
made to correct them, and to point out some of the more obvious 
tasks before the citizen today. 


Three of the Criticisms of the operation of democratic gov- 

demonstrated ernment in America have, in the main, crystallized 
shortcomings in three specific charges: 

of democratic 1. A widespread corruption in American po- 
rule litical life, particularly noticeable in the politics of 

great cities. 

2. A low tone in the government service caused by the prac¬ 
tice of giving public offices to reward political workers, rather than 
on account of fitness for the position itself. 

3. A failure of governmental machinery to respond quickly to 
popular will caused by complicated methods of registering the 
wishes of voters and of getting their will expressed in governmental 
action. 


Against each of these shortcomings the public conscience of 
the past generation has fought a hard battle. These efforts for im¬ 
provement have not been entirely successful, some have seemed to 
fail. But the significance of each of these struggles is that democ¬ 
racy has already developed the forces which operate to correct its 
own mistakes. We shall consider each of these movements for an 
improved popular rule. 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


81 


The battle for It would be a very rash patriot who would deny 
honesty in that corruption in the city and state governments 

politics of the United States has not at times been greatly 

in excess of that in most of the more highly 
civilized nations of Europe. The democratic principle has filled our 
legislatures with men who were not selected especially because of 
moral integrity, economic independence, professional skill, or any 
other special qualification. They have been selected as “repre¬ 
sentative,” that is, fair approximations of the ordinary man. And 
it would be grossly unfair to deny that they have not been in fact 
fairly representative. As ordinary mortals, they have entered into 
the business of legislation with average intentions of doing right. 
But under our system of electing men to represent the “average” 
man we have made our legislative bodies a battle ground between 
“average men” and the skilled and practical representatives of 
special interests. We have permitted these special interests to 
tempt our representatives beyond the power of resistance possessed 
by the ordinary man and they have all too often yielded. Before 
we judge or condemn we must consider the conditions which are 
present in every legislative body. Men from the ordinary walks of 
life, not the representatives of any specific interest or group, but 
usually the appointees of a political organization, are placed in a 
legislative body. They are not put there to work openly in the 
interests of a definite purpose but with the general responsibility 
of “legislating” upon whatever “comes up.” They go there with 
this rather vague notion of what their “job” is, and after they are 
there a host of private interests descend upon them with “laws 
to pass.” 

The trials of a The legislator becomes a person to be pursued 
legislator like a hunted animal. Railroads send their law¬ 

yers with demands for changes in the tax laws; 
employers’ associations seek changes in the workmen’s compensa¬ 
tion act; representatives of banks want new regulatory measures ; 
labor unions want laws to protect workingmen in certain industries 
against certain dangers; organizations protecting certain kinds of 
women workers seek a minimum wage law; another organization 
asks for a state constabulary; automobile clubs ask for more and 


82 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


better highways; medical and legal societies ask for better protec¬ 
tion for their professions; teachers seek tenure laws; school board 
members ask for more taxes; everybody is representing some in¬ 
terest but the legislator himself. He finds that representing the 
“public” is a difficult job. The “public” is the only thing that he 
doesn't see and hear. And the resulting legislation is a resultant 
of many stresses, strains, and pulls tempered by the irregularity of 
the resisting media, the law-makers. Everywhere the contest is 
unequal—the “public” sends its average man—the railroad not the 
average lawyer but the most skillful that money can hire. Hun¬ 
dreds of cases can be cited where a lawyer or other special repre¬ 
sentative receives as much for a few days spent in lobbying as the 
legislator receives for two years' service. Special representatives, 
receiving annual salaries twice as large as the President of the 
United States, contest with legislators receiving two thousand dol¬ 
lars a year. At least a dozen of the under secretaries of a large 
commercial federation in Washington are paid more than the sen¬ 
ators they seek to influence. 

Hard to con- The effort to eliminate corruption from politics 
vict grafters and legislation has taken a number of forms. The 
first is the natural, direct tendency to punish the 
wrong doer. Probably the most spectacular prosecution ever held 
in America was that which overthrew the infamous Tweed. Backed 
by a thoroughly aroused public with the aid of all the newspapers 
of the city and with capable prosecutors, the entire ring was driven 
from politics. But the actual legal punishment meted out was 
small. Tweed was arrested, acquitted, and later re-arrested. The 
rest of the group escaped, most of them with their ill-gotten wealth. 
The history of prosecution for corruption in the United States illus¬ 
trates well both the difficulty of getting evidence of such a subtle 
form of dishonesty, and the ineffective processes of the criminal law 
in really convicting the wrong doer. It may be said with assurance 
that the ability of dishonest men in politics to improve the tech¬ 
nique of their irregularity greatly outstrips the efforts of the pur¬ 
suers to improve the process of apprehension. 

Another more effective method is to hold the party responsible, 
and, when wrong is done, to “turn the rascals out,” and substitute 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


83 


the other party. President Hadley has keenly evaluated this 
method in the following passage: 

“This penalty therefore has great use as a deterrent. As a 
remedy its value is less clear. When the representatives of one 
party are turned out, the representatives of another party come in 
—sometimes immediately, sometimes after a brief spasm of non- 
partisan government. The old political machinery is at hand for 
the use of the other party. The old temptations are there, and the 
old opportunities are there. The public has simply substituted 
one political machine for another. It is better off, insofar as the 
new incumbents are frightened by the fate of their predecessors; 
it is worse off, insofar as the new incumbents are hungrier than 
their predecessors. As a general rule, however, the policy of 
turning the rascals out while leaving the organization of the body 
politic unchanged, has an outcome which has been aptly described 
in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke: 

“ ‘When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh 
through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will 
return unto my house whence I came out. 

“ ‘And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. 

“ ‘Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more 
wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the 
last state of that man is worse than the first.’ ” 

Legal remedies The presence of corruption has brought about 
for corruption the enactment of a large number of regulatory 
laws designed to penalize violations of an ap¬ 
proved code of political conduct. Some of these laws are designed 
to regulate lobbying. These usually take the form of licensing the 
lobbyists and controlling their activities. However, unless the 
legislation restricts the personal liberty of its members to a degree 
that would be impracticable, any law designed to regulate lobbying 
would be unable to prevent the use of improper methods of in¬ 
fluence. However, much has been gained by regulation which 
tends to give official status to the representative of special interests. 
But the increased purity of legislative bodies is due not to any 
regulation of lobbying but an increased sense of public responsi¬ 
bility on the part of the individual legislator. Likewise, the large 


84 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


number of laws which have been enacted to regulate party activity, 
limit the uses and provide publicity for money used in politics, have 
a wholesome effect. Unquestionably, within the past few years, the 
bitter lesson has been learned by politicians that there is a point 
where the use of money in campaigns, even for legitimate pur¬ 
poses, ceases to be good politics. The quickest way to give the 
opposition a very popular issue is to amass a fund large enough to 
justify the cry of ‘‘slush fund.” The failure of at least two can¬ 
didacies for the presidential nomination in 1920 is a clear indication 
of a new attitude toward the use of money even for the purchase of 
“publicity.” 

Another method of combating the pernicious influence of spe¬ 
cial privilege has been the effort to take the profit out of franchises 
and other public grants through the extension of government 
ownership. This very significant tendency has made most progress 
in municipalities where corruption was most likely to develop and 
in many cases has completely eliminated the activities of corrup¬ 
tionists. 

A new con- It is not difficult, however, after a consideration of 
science in the foregoing methods used to combat corruption, to 
politics see that the most potent force in correcting the evil 

of corruption is in the manner in which most people 
now view public office. A generation ago most people felt that 
corruption was widespread, that practically every public official 
who was in a position to profit by public contracts or franchises was 
"to a greater or less extent enriching himself thereby. This was not 
•generally considered a breach of trust but rather an evidence of 
"“smartness.” The words were often used, “Well, everybody does 
it and I guess X is no worse than anyone else.” But the fact that 
someone eventually paid for the prosperity of the office holder, and 
that the one who paid was the tax payer, caused a new “conscience” 
to develop. Wrong doing in public office was no longer condoned 
and evidences of material prosperity by legislators, aldermen, or 
county commissioners was viewed with hostile interest. The col¬ 
lective interest in honest government once aroused, it became “good 
politics to be honest.” 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


85 


The pessimism Brooks Adams in a recent volume, in which he 
of Brooks published a number of the posthumous papers of 

Adams his brother Henry, draws a most harrowing pic¬ 

ture of the failure of democracy. 1 According to 
Mr. Adams, the ideal democracy existed some time previous to 
1828, the year in which his distinguished grandfather met the co¬ 
horts of Jackson. Before that date, competence in public office 
was rewarded by permanence of tenure, distinction, and cultural 
opportunities. After Jackson, the course of democracy tended 
downward, science was “sunk in chaos/’ John Quincy Adams died 
in disillusionment, and the people of America have persistently 
been seeking their own destruction. “Democracy must partake of 
the complexity of its infinitely complex creator and ultimately end 
in chaos,” while “society is steadily undergoing a degradation of 
vital energy.” The evidence which Mr. Adams seems to feel is a 
justification of his melancholy prediction is the presence of the 
spoilsman in public life and the absence of an appreciation of sci¬ 
ence on the part of the masses of the people. 

The battle for Let us grant the truth of the charge that the effi- 
efficiency ciency of administration of government in the Unit¬ 

ed States has fallen below that of the administra¬ 
tions of Washington and Adams as well as the governments of Eng¬ 
land, France, and Germany. We have had to pay this price to be 
free of a leisure class government which has, throughout the ages, 
failed in every crisis of human affairs to understand the aspirations 
and needs of the public. The American democracy has made a delib¬ 
erate choice in this and has paid the price. Whether this price has 
been too high depends upon the sense of values held by the person 
who contemplates the conditions. The majority in America has felt 
that the control of their own government for better or for worse 
has been worth the added burden of inefficiency. Under the 
“chaos” seen by Mr. Adams, there has been operating a force which 
is more significant than all of the superimposed efficiency of the 
days of Federalism. There has been a steady improvement of the 
conditions of public employment, an increasing appreciation of 
good administration by the masses of the people, and the perfection 


l “The Degradation of Democratic Dogma.” 


86 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


of methods of selecting, training, and directing public servants by 
scientific methods. 

During the period following the administration of General 
Grant, a very strong movement arose to substitute, in the Federal 
government, for the old method of political appointment, a system 
of basing appointments to public office upon merit. The goal of 
this movement, according to President Elliot, one of its most im¬ 
portant backers, was to secure “a public service, national, state, and 
municipal, exclusively composed of men, each of whom possesses 
the knowledge and skill needed for his own task, well disciplined, 
devoted to their work and to the public authority which employs 
them, and regarding their occupation as an honorable and satis¬ 
factory life career/' A Federal Civil Service law was passed in 
1883 which is today the basis of the present merit system. Since 
its establishment, successive presidents have extended, by executive 
The rise of order, the scope of this law until, at the present 

. . time, it has accomplished practically everything that 

civil service • , r , , t / £ & 

reform the on £ ma * re t° rmers had hoped for. 1 he same 

principle has been adopted in the civil service of 
many cities and more recently in a number of states. In general, 
our experience with the merit system has been fairly satisfactory. 
It has not removed public offices entirely from political influences 
but it has contributed a great deal toward an improved public 
service. It has, however, depended for its success almost entirely 
upon the sympathy of the responsible officials. For example, a 
Civil Service Commission may be appointed in a city which is 
sympathetic to the political organization in control, and under the 
operation of this Commission it is still possible to place all political 
appointees in office. On the other hand, the practice has been 
followed quite definitely of removing a man, politically objection¬ 
able, by eliminating his position for the time being and thus ac¬ 
complishing the Same result as under the old system of direct 
appointments. Moreover, the merit system has oftentimes been 
an obstacle in the way of a strong and capable executive who has 
been hampered by legal technicalities attendant upon civil service 
appointments. A frank estimate, however, of the permanent re- 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


87 


suits of the civil service reform movement must indicate that it has 
constituted a great improvement over the spoils system. 

New problems Civil service reform, as originally conceived, 
for civil service was a purely negative process. It provided 
reform against a frankly political appointment by pro¬ 

viding an examination by an impartial body. 
Moreover, it protected workers in the service from interference. 
More recent years have revealed, however, that much more is 
needed on the constructive side of civil service regulations. We 
must provide for a more elastic and human system of appointment 
to office without bringing back the old evils. In other words, we 
must recognize that qualifications for public office cannot, except 
in certain types of work, be determined by any set examination. 
We must make the civil service laws so flexible that, under efficient, 
active administrators, there may be the possibility of direct and 
vigorous action in making appointments. We must, moreover, 
provide for attracting good men into government service, it being 
a very short-sighted policy to allow private enterprise to go out 
into the market and secure the services of promising men and 
women, while government service waits for those who come to it. 
Methods of training for civil service must be devised and people 
attracted to the training by the possibility of 'adequate salaries, 
reasonable promotions, and protection against vicissitudes of old 
age and illness. 

Strong demand The latest movement for improved public ad- 
for efficiency ministration is the so-called efficiency movement, 
develops This very important development in the science 

of government is a recognition that government 
service is a technical and exacting profession and needs the atten¬ 
tion of scientific students and professionally trained workers. This 
also takes into consideration the fact that the professions, such as 
engineering and accounting, should be linked up with the govern¬ 
ment service. It is a curious fact that one of the first real appre¬ 
ciations of the problem of improved public administration appeared 
in an article published in 1887 by Woodrow Wilson. This essay, 
entitled, “Study of Administration,” was a brilliant appeal to stu¬ 
dents of government to give more attention to the methods of 


88 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


public administration. It asserted that the application of civil 
service reform to administration could not accomplish all that its 
zealous supporters were at that time claiming. It was set forth 
that the organization itself must be studied, its methods tested, and 
its technique based upon sound principles. The writer clearly as¬ 
serted the reality of a science of administration which would yield 
rich fruits for the patient investigator. The distinction, now com¬ 
monplace, between those agencies of the government which de¬ 
termine policy and those charged with their execution was pointed 
out, with a tempered emphasis upon the need for the elimination of 
partisanship from the latter. The difficulty of drawing this line of 
distinction was thus expressed: “No lines of demarcation, setting 
apart administrative from non-administrative functions, can be run 
between this and that department of government without being run 
up hill and down dale, over dizzy heights of distinction and through 
dense jungles of statutory enactment, hither and thither around 
‘iiY and Tuts/ ‘whens’ and ‘howevers/ until they become altogether 
lost to the common eye not accustomed to this kind of surveying, 
and consequently not acquainted with the use of the theodolite of 
logical discernment.” A demand for the study of administration 
in the higher institutions of learning was made with a prophetic 
suggestion of the modern movement for training for public service. 

During the twenty years following this, little was done in the 
way of improved administration through scientific study, with the 
exception of the beginnings made in the study of municipal govern¬ 
ment and administration and the development of the study of ad¬ 
ministrative law by Frank J. Goodnow. 

Since 1906, however, the study of public administration has 
made such marked progress that no study of all of its countless 
manifestations can be attempted here. With the establishment of 
the New York Bureau of Municipal Research in 1906 began the 
formation of a large number of private and public bureaus for the 
scientific study of administration. 

There have been many discouraging factors, of course, in the 
development of scientific administration in American democratic 
governments. There have been many attempts also to turn these 
movements into the old channels of political preferment. But the 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


89 


net result has been worth while. The people of Ohio, for example, 
should not overlook the fact that a legislature, not particularly dis¬ 
tinguished for lack of partisan feeling, appointed a committee in 
1919 for the purpose of overhauling the state administration in the 
interests of efficiency and economy, and that this committee se¬ 
lected for the task men who were not politicians but who were 
skilled government administrators. Unquestionably this type of 
re-organization is a thing greatly to be desired and is another in¬ 
dication of the fact that politicians, when once convinced that the 
people want efficiency, will offer it. The Ohio Efficiency and 
Economy Commission was one of nearly twenty which have been 
appointed for similar purposes in American states, all for the pur¬ 
pose of improving administration in the interests of efficiency and 
economy. It may be said in conclusion that democracy has already, 
on its own initiative, gone a long distance in the direction of 
creating a permanent tradition of efficient public administration. 

The battle for One of the best statements of the efforts made 
popular during the period of the Progressive movement to 

control give the people more adequate control over their 

own government is the following passage from 
Theodore Roosevelt’s “Confession of Faith” before the Progressive 
National Convention in 1912: 

“The first essential in the Progressive programme is the right 
of the people to rule. Wherever representative government has 
in actual fact become non-representative there the people should 
secure to themselves the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, 
doing it in such fashion as to make it evident that they do not 
intend to use these instrumentalities wantonly or frequently, but 
to hold them ready for use in order to correct the misdeeds or 
failures of the public servants when it has become evident that 
these misdeeds and failures cannot be corrected in ordinary and 
normal fashion. The administrative officer should be given full 
power, but otherwise he cannot do well the people’s work; and the 
people should be given full power over him. 

“I do not mean that we shall abandon representative govern¬ 
ment; on the contrary, I mean that we shall devise methods by 
which our government shall become really representative. To use 
such measures as the initiative, referendum, and recall indis- 


90 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


criminately and promiscuously on all kinds of occasions would un¬ 
doubtedly cause disaster; but events have shown that at present 
our institutions are not representative—at any rate in many states, 
and sometimes in the nation—and that we cannot wisely afford to 
let this condition of things remain longer uncorrected. We haVe 
permitted the growing up of a breed of politicians who, sometimes 
for improper political purposes, sometimes as a means of serving 
the great special interests of privilege which stand behind them, 
twist so-called representative institutions into a means of thwarting 
instead of expressing the deliberate and well-thought-out judgment 
of the people as a whole. This cannot be permitted. We choose 
our representatives for two purposes. In the first place, we choose 
them with the desire that, as experts, they shall study certain 
matters with which we, the people as a whole, cannot be intimately 
acquainted, and that as regards these matters they shall formulate 
a policy for our betterment. Even as regards such a policy, and 
the actions taken thereunder, we ourselves should have the right 
ultimately to vote our disapproval of it, if w r e feel such disap¬ 
proval. But, in the next place, our representatives are chosen to 
carry out certain policies as to which we have definitely made up 
our minds, and here we expect them to represent us by doing what 
we have decided ought to be done. All I desire to do by securing 
more direct control of the governmental agents and agencies of the 
people is to give the people the chance to make their representatives 
really represent them whenever the government becomes misrepre- 
sentative instead of representative. . . . Again and again laws 

demanded by the people have been refused to the people because 
the representatives of the people misrepresented them. Now my 
proposal is merely that we shall give to the people the power, 
to be used not wantonly but only in exceptional cases, themselves 
to see that the governmental action in their name is really the 
action they desire.’’ 

Direct legisla- The most important device for making the gov- 
tion fairly ernment more responsive to public opinion has 

useful been the process of direct legislation by vote of 

the electorate through the initiative and referen¬ 
dum. Under the initiative and referendum, voters secure in certain 
measures a popular decision upon certain specific laws. The move¬ 
ment for the initiative and referendum has been one of the most 
important political developments of the past generation. About 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


91 


one-half of the states have now provided for direct legislation in 
one form or another. In addition to the initiative and referendum 
in states, most of the cities which have adopted modern charters 
have adopted the same principles in one form or another. The 
experience of America with the initiative or referendum has neither 
justified the high hopes of its supporters nor has it brought about 
the disastrous results predicted by its enemies. In most states it 
has been used less, a few years after its adoption, than in the be¬ 
ginning. It has, in most cases, been used to delay action upon some 
law which might be termed “progressive” and in many cases has 
resulted in the defeat of progressive legislation. The net result 
probably has been in favor of the conservative. It must be stated, 
however, that its presence has undoubtedly deterred legislatures 
from many actions which they otherwise might have taken, and 
compelled them to enact certain measures which they otherwise 
would have neglected. Its net result has been more its effect upon 
the state of mind of legislature and public rather than any actual, 
definite accomplishments. The same judgment must be made for 
the recall which has been adopted in ten states and a large number 
of cities. It has been used very infrequently, but none of its sup¬ 
porters expected that it would be used often. Its virtue is rather 
in the moral effect which it has had upon the office holders. 

Short ballot Another effort toward bringing the people into 

aids democracy more direct control of their government is the so- 
called “Short Ballot Movement.” This is based 
upon the fact that a long, complicated ballot prevents a voter from 
exercising judgment in selecting officials, and that it is well for the 
public to exercise great care in selecting a few responsible officials 
who then select their own subordinates. This movement has had a 
very general success. Practically every city charter which has 
been written within the last twenty years has simplified the ballot, 
while many states have re-organized their administrative depart¬ 
ments in accordance with the same principle. It should be noted 
that the movement toward a short ballot in cities and states is in 
fact a return to the principle upon which the makers of the Ameri¬ 
can constitution worked. In fact, our National Federal Govern¬ 
ment is the best example of the success of electing one adminis- 


92 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE ' 


trator who can then appoint all of his subordinates and hold them 
responsible for their actions. 


MORE LIGHT 

“A Plutocratic party may choose to ignore science, if it is 
heedless whether its pretended solutions of social problems that 
may win political triumphs ultimately succeed or fail. But no 
Labor party can hope to maintain its position unless its proposals 
are, in fact, the outcome of the best political science of its time; or 
to fulfill its purpose unless that science is continually wresting new 
fields from human ignorance. Hence, although the purpose of the 
Labor party must by the law of its being remain for all time un¬ 
changed, its policy and its program will, we hope, undergo a per¬ 
petual development, as knowledge grows, and as new phases of the 
social problem present themselves, in a continually finer adjustment 
of our measures to our ends. If law is the mother of freedom, 
science, to the Labor party, must be the parent of law.” 

Labor party In these words the Labor party of England has 
pledged to affirmed its belief that a democracy which does not 
science educate its citizens cannot survive. The task of 

giving a technique of government to a few members 
of a privileged class has in the past been a simple task, compared 
with the responsibility of educating the mass of people in the 
mysteries of self government. 


This education for democratic self government is especially 
difficult because it so clearly involves a kind of training wholly un¬ 
like the traditional education of the past. The failure of the 
“merely educated” classes to meet practically every great political 
T , . , crisis of modern times is the best evidence of this 

of Hie 118 3 68 need f ° r a distinctl y democratic type of training, 
educated Evidence is not lacking to show that when, in the 

past, decisions were to be made involving the 
actual conditions of life, the so called “educated” have generally 
been wrong. James Bryce has made a profound statement upon 
the value of traditional education in public affairs : 


“The chief difference between the so-called upper, or wealthier, 
and the humbler strata of society, is that the former are less in- 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


fluenced by sentiment and possibly more influenced by notions, often 
erroneous, of their own interest. Having something to lose, they 
imagine dangers to their property or their class ascendency. Mov¬ 
ing in a more artificial society, their sympathies are less readily 
excited, and they more frequently indulge the tendency to cynicism 
natural to those who lead a life full of unreality and conven¬ 
tionalisms. 

“The apparent paradox that where the humbler classes have 
differed in opinion from !the higher, they have often been proved 
by the event to have been right and their so-called betters wrong 
(a fact sufficiently illustrated by the experience of many European 
countries during the last half-century), may perhaps be explained 
by considering that the historical and scientific data on which the 
solution of a difficult political problem depends are really just as 
little known to the wealthy as to the poor. Ordinary education, 
even the sort of education which is represented by a university 
degree, does not fit a man to handle these questions, and it some¬ 
times fills him with a vain conceit of his own competence which 
closes his mind to argument and to the accumulating evidence of 
facts. Education ought, no doubt, to enlighten a man; but the 
educated classes, speaking generally, are the property-holding 
classes, and the possession of property does more to make a man 
timid than education does to make him hopeful. He is apt to 
undei*rate the power as well as the worth of sentiment; he over¬ 
values the restraints which existing institutions impose; he has 
a faint appreciation of the curative power of freedom, and of the 
tendency which brings things right when men have been left to 
their own devices, and have learnt from failure how to attain suc¬ 
cess. In the less-educated man a certain simplicity and open¬ 
ness of mind go some way to compensate for the lack of knowledge. 
He is more apt to be influenced by the authority of leaders; but 
as, at least in England and America, he is generally shrewd enough 
to discern between a great man and a demagogue, this is more a 
gain than a loss. 

“While suggesting these as explanations of the paradox, I 
admit that it remains a paradox. But the paradox is not in the 
statement, but in the facts. Nearly all great political and social 
causes have made their way first among the middle or humbler 
classes. The original impulse which has set the cause in motion, 



94 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


the inspiring ideas that have drawn men to it, have come from 
lofty and piercing minds, and minds generally belonging to the 
cultivated class. But the principles and precepts these minds have 
delivered have waxed strong because the common people received 
them gladly, while the wealthy and educated classes have frowned 
on or persecuted them.” 1 

Political The kind of training needed by the citizen of a 

sophistication democracy has so far been given only by actual 

needed participation in government itself. Political wis¬ 

dom is, it is true, contained in books, but its 
evaluation and comprehension comes only to those who know the 
facts of life. Aristotle’s Politics and The Federalist cannot be 
understood by the mind which has not seen beyond the study. 
Only those who have seen the habits of people at first hand can 
realize how truly these writers have recorded political wisdom. 
Costly as is the education of experience, it is the only training in 
citizenship yet devised which is worthy of the name. To under¬ 
stand the instincts under which people act, to put aside cant, tra¬ 
dition, and taboos and view government as a very human and im¬ 
perfect machine upon which much experimentation must be made, 
to know the facts of history not the golden image of the past with 
which conservatives deceive themselves, to believe in the illimitable 
capacity of man for education: these are the marks of political 
sophistication and the minimum equipment of a statesman in the 
modern world. When schools can give these, they may again be¬ 
come the agencies for the training of a ruling class—this time the 
rulers being all the citizens, not a favored few. 

Today, there has been developed the beginnings of a science of 
public administration; a few pioneers feeling that a democracy in 
order to survive must develop the skill to manage its many interests 
and that this skill must come not, as in the past, from a small’ 
leisured class, but from professional, trained workers drawn from 
the ranks of life. Within the past twenty years there has grown 
up, here and there, efforts to improve methods of public administra¬ 
tion by means of scientific study. The New York Bureau of Mu¬ 
nicipal Research, already mentioned, made one of its cardinal pur- 

l “The American Commonwealth,” Vo!. II, Part IV. 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


95 


poses the training of men for governmental research and its ex¬ 
ample has been followed in a score of universities and training 
schools. 

New efforts to Another kind of effort equally significant is rep- 
inform public resented in a number of voluntary organizations, 
opinion intended to give to the public accurate disinter¬ 

ested information not colored by the desire to con¬ 
vert anyone to anything, but to give citizens the facts upon which 
they may base opinions. Bureaus have been established for the 
purpose of informing the public concerning the activities of public 
institutions such as Congress, the legislatures, and city administra¬ 
tions. Such services should grow far beyond their present small 
beginnings, for the need of people nowadays is not to be told what 
to do by any authority but to be given the facts upon which an 
opinion may be based. 

The daily press has within the past generation undergone a 
marked transformation. Fifty years ago, the newspapers were 
quite generally edited and published by single individuals. The 
New York Tribune, for example, was the voice of Horace Greeley, 
the Louisville Courier Journal that of Henry Watterson. But with 
the passing of that generation of editors, the daily papers have in 
general become business enterprises in which ownership is diffused 
among many stockholders and removed from contact with the 
readers. The result has been some loss of influence in the leader¬ 
ship of opinion and a widespread complaint as to the quality and 
adequacy of the news. The public should receive not opinions 
about facts but the facts themselves, given fully and without the 
desire to influence opinion in any way. While many great papers 
have scrupulously separated editorial policy from news, the danger 
of the influence of a special point of view is still widely suspected. 
Walter Lippman has made a very important criticism of modern 
news gathering in a recent book entitled '‘Liberty and the News, 
in which the following conclusion is expressed. 

“If we are to move ahead, we must see a great independent 
journalism, setting standards for commercial journalism, like those 
which the splendid English co-operative societies are setting for 
commercial business. An enormous amount of money is dribbled 


96 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


away in one fashion or another on little papers, mass meetings, 
and what not. If only some considerable portion of it could be 
set aside to establish a central international news agency, we 
should make progress. We cannot fight the untruth which en¬ 
velops us by parading our opinions. We can do it by reporting 
the facts, and we do not deserve to win if the facts are against us. 

“We shall advance when we have learned humility; when we 
have learned to seek the truth, to reveal it and publish it; when 
we care more for that than for the privilege of arguing about 
ideas in a fog of uncertainty.” 

More Faith 

The conserva- A Massachusetts legislator said, in 1879, in an- 
tive lacks faith swer to a proposal to give women a vote in school 
in men elections : “If we make this experiment, we shall 

destroy the race, which will be blasted by Al¬ 
mighty God.” 

It is the opposition of this sort of men that democracy must 
overcome whenever it takes a step forward. “At every crossway 
on the road that leads to the future,” says Maeterlinck, “humanity 
has placed, against each of us, ten thousand men to guard the past: 
let us have no fear that the fairest towers of former days will be 
insufficiently defended.” The person who fears that democracy is 
impetuous and easily becomes radically inclined, is curiously 
enough the conservative who knows only his own sort of people. 
Not knowing most men’s minds he has a sort of fear of their 
“innate badness.” He believes in a sort of political and social origi¬ 
nal sin. He is afraid to take an honest chance with human life. 
And it is in this very respect that the conservative is to be distin¬ 
guished from the progressive. The conservative believes with 
Machiavelli that the fundamental nature of man is bad and if re¬ 
leased will, like Satan, roam through the world seeking destruc¬ 
tion. The progressive believes the opposite and calls constantly 
for the liberation of the human instincts. And between these points 
of view the politics of the world is probably always destined to be 
fought. 

In the preceding paragraph, the word “believes” was de¬ 
liberately used for there is no demonstrable fact basis to support 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


97 


either the conservative’s or progressive’s opinion of man’s nature. 
In one case it is fear and in the other, faith. And this dependence 
upon faith is one of the inevitable conclusions to which the pro¬ 
gressive political thinker must come. His decision in most things 
must leave the field of political facts and be made on ethical 
principles. 

Some notion of the faith needed by the progressive can be 
gained from the poetry of the most powerful voice ever raised in 
defense of democracy, that of Walt Whitman. Nowhere does this 
great teacher point out more clearly the democratic principle than 
in the following passage from his “Democratic Vistas.” It should 
be the creed of every man who believes in a great destiny for our 
democratic experiment: 

‘'Meantime, general humanity has always, in every depart¬ 
ment, been full of perverse maleficence, and is so yet. In down¬ 
cast hours the soul thinks it always will be—but soon recovers 
from such sickly moods. I myself see clearly enough the crude, 
defective streaks in all the strata of the common people; the 
specimens and vast collections of the ignorant, the credulous, the 
unfit and uncouth, the incapable, and the very low and poor. An 
eminent person sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and 
improve a nation’s politics by absorbing such morbid collections 
and qualities therein. The point is a formidable one, and there 
will doubtless always be numbers of solid and reflective citizens 
who will never get over it. Our answer is general. We believe 
the ulterior object of political and all other government (having, 
of course, provided for the police, the safety of life, property, 
and for the basic statute and common law, and their adminis¬ 
tration), to be not merely to rule, to repress disorder, etc., but 
to develop, to open up to cultivation, to encourage the possibilities 
of all beneficent and manly outcroppage, and of that aspiration 
for independence, and the pride and self-respect latent in all 
characters. 

“The purpose of democracy—supplanting old belief in the 
necessary absoluteness of established dynastic rulership, temporal, 
ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against 
chaos, crime, and ignorance—is, through many transmigrations 
and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, to 


98 


PARTIES, POLITICS, AND PEOPLE 


illustrate this doctrine or theory that man, properly trained in 
sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, and series 
of laws, unto himself, surrounding and providing for, not only 
his own personal control, but all his relations to other individuals, 
and to the State. The radiation of this truth is the key of the 
most significant doings of our immediately preceding three cen¬ 
turies, and has been the political genesis and life of America.” 

SOME USEFUL BOOKS ON POLITICAL PARTIES 

General 

The most comprehensive treatise on American political parties 
is Ostrogorski’s Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, 
Vol. II. A condensed edition of this work is called Democracy 
and the Party System. Very useful books for college classes are 
Ray’s Introduction to Political Parties and Practical Politics and Mer- 
riam’s The American Party System. Bryce’s American Commonwealth 
contains a valuable section on parties (Vol. II, Part III) and his more 
recent Modern Democracies several valuable chapters. Chapters in 
Beard’s American Government and Politics will be helpful to the be¬ 
ginner. 

The History of National Politics 
Excellent descriptions of the economic forces directing the course 
of American politics are Weyl’s New Democracy , Ford’s Rise and 
Growth of American Politics , Hadley’s Undercurrents in American 
Politics, and Simon’s Social Forces in American History. 

Special periods are described in Beard’s Economic Interpretation 
of the Constitution 'of the United States, Economic Origins of the- 
Jeffersonian Democracy, and Contemporary American History. 

The most readable and modern histories of the United States are 
in the Riverside American History series and the Chronicles of Amer¬ 
ica series. 

Stanwood’s History of the Presidency is a complete reference 
work containing all party platforms and election statistics. 

The most informing accounts of the politics of recent years can 
be found in the biographies and autobiographies of political leaders 
of the time. To the readers of this book, Groly’s Life of Marcus 
Alonzo Hanna and Tom L. Johnson’s My Story, should prove of spe- 


TRAINING FOR POPULAR GOVERNMENT 


99 


cial interest. Other books of this kind are the Autobiography of 
Thomas Collier Platt, Joseph Benson Foraker's Notes of a Busy Life, 
Theodore Roosevelt’s Autobiography, R. M. LaFoilette’s Autobiog¬ 
raphy, and Brand Whitlock’s Forty Years of It. 

National and Local Party Organizations 

In addition to the works of Ostrogorski, Bryce, Ray, and Stan- 
wood, the following books will be found interesting: 

Bishop, Presidential Nominations and Elections. 

Steffens, The Shame of the Cities. 

Myers, History of Tammany Hall. 

Lindsay and O'Higgins, The Beast and the Jungle. 

Brooks, Corruption in American Politics and Life. 

A vast amount of periodical literature will be found listed in Ray’s 

Political Parties and Practical Politics. 

Public Opinion 

One of the best discussions of public opinion is in Bryce’s Ameri¬ 
can Commonwealth ( Vol II, Part IV). Lowell’s Public Opinion and 
Popidar Government is a good study of the operation of direct legis¬ 
lation. Lippman’s Public Opinion is also very valuable. 

General discussions of American politics and life are contained in 
Croly’s Progressive Democracy and Hadley’s Undercurrents in Ameri¬ 
can Politics. 

The most important contributions to social psychology from the 
point of view of a student of politics are Graham Wallas’ Human Na¬ 
ture in Politics and The Great Society. The new psychology is dis¬ 
cussed in Ross’ Principles of Sociology and Martin's Behavior of 
Crowds. 

The ethical and educational implications of democracy are well 
described in Tuft’s Our Democracy and Dewey’s Democracy and Edu- 
cation. 


Party Control in National Government 




1789 

Federalist 

Washington 



1793 

a 

u 



1797 

a 

Adams 

Jefferson 

Republican 1801 



« 

u 

1805 



Madison 

ii 

1809 



ii 

a 

1813 



Monroe 

a 

1817 



a 

a 

1821 



J. Q. Adams 

a 

1825 



Jackson 

Democrat 

1829 



u 

ii 

1833 



Van Buren 

it 

1837 





1841 

Whig 

Harrison 



1841 

it 

Tyler 

Polk 

Democrat 

1845 





1849 

Whig 

Taylor 



1850 

U 

Fillmore 

Pierce 

Democrat 

1853 



Buchanan 

ii 

1857 





1861 

Republican 

Lincoln 



1865 

ii 

ii 



1865 

U 

Johnson 



1869 

U 

Grant 



1873 

u 

ii 



1877 

u 

Hayes 



1881 

u 

Garfield 



1881 

ii 

Arthur 

Cleveland 

| Democrat 

1885 





1889 

Republican 

| Harrison 

Cleveland 

Democrat 

1893 





1897 

Republican 

McKinley 



1901 

ii 

u 



1901 

ii 

Roosevelt 



1905 

ii 

H 



1909 

ii 

Taft 

Wilson 

Democrat 

1913 




ii 

1917 





1921 

Republican 

Harding 



1923 

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